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THE  TIMES 
HISTORY  OF  THE  WAR 


[Repainted  from  a  canvas  by  Howard  V.   Brown  in  The  Scienti/ic  American'] 

GERMAN  SIEGE  GUNS  USED  IN  THE  REDUCTION  OF  LIEGE. 


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HISTORY 


OF 


THE  WAR 


The  Battlefield  of  Europe 


THE     PUBLICATION     OFFICE     OF 
THE    TIMES    IN    I>ONDON 


NEW  YORK 
WOODWARD  &  VAN  SLYKE,  Incorporated, 
45  West  Thirty-fourth  Street 


All  rights  reserved, 

Woodward  &  Van  Slyke,  Incorporated, 

45  West  34th  Street, 

New  York,  N.  Y. 

U.  S.  A. 


HENRY  MORSE  STEPHEH5 


ar 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I.     Political  Antecedents  to  the  War 5 

II.     The  Army   and   Fortresses   of   Belgium .' 27 

III.  The  German   Invasion   of   Luxemburg  and   Belgium 43 

IV.  The  German  Army  and  German  Strategy 53 

V.    The  German  Army— 1870-1914  67 

VI.    The  German  Army  in  the  Field 90 

VII.    The  German  Theory  of  War 107 

VIII.    The  British  Army   129 

IX.     The  Armies  of  the  Dominions ' 149 

X.     The  Native   Indian   Army    161 

XI.     The  Hally  of  the   Empire 168 

XII.    The  British  Theory  of  War 178 

XIII.  The  French  Army 183 

XIV.  The  French  Theory  of  War 205 

XV.     The  Story  of  Liege   217 

XVI.     The  German  Advance  to.  Brussels 257 

XVII.     The  First  French  Offensive  in  Alsace 283 

XVIII.     German  Conquest  of  Belgium 297 

XIX.     The  German  Advance  on  Paris:  Battles  of  Namur,  Charleroi,  Mons 327 

XX.    The  Retreat  to  the  Marne 355 


509868 


ILLUSTRATIONS,  MAPS,  ETC. 

PAGE 

Luxemburg  and  the  Surrounding  Country 4 

H.  M.  The   King 6 

H.  M,  The  Queen '7 

Luxemburg  8 

The  Grand  Duchess   of  Luxemburg 9 

The  French  Ambassador  in  London,  M.  Paul  Cambon 9 

The   Empeoror   William   II 10 

Berlin    11 

The  Late  Archduke   Francis   Ferdinand 12 

The  Late  Duchess  of  Hohenberg 12 

Serajevo    13 

The  Emperor  Francis  Joseph 14 

The  Russian  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  M.  Sazonoff 15 

The   British   Ambassador   in   Berlin,   Sir   Edward   Goschen 15 

The    Emperor    Nicholas    II 16 

Belgrade 17 

The  King  of  the  Belgians 18 

The  Servian  Prime  Minister,  M.  Pashitch ' 19 

The  Austro-Hungarian  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  Count  Berchtold 19 

Map  of  the  Area  of  The  European  War 20  and  21 

The  British  Ambassador  in  Vienna,  Sir  Maurice  de  Bunsen 22 

The  German  Ambassador  in  St.  Petersburg,  Count  Pourtales 22 

Metz   23 

Bismarck     • 24 

Von  Moltke 25 

The  German  Ambassador  in  Paris,  Baron  Von  Schoen 26 

The  French  Ambassador  in  Berlin,  M.  Jules  Cambon 26 

Liege    29 

General   Leman 30 

Plan  of  the  Liege  Fortresses 31 

Belgian   Soldiers   at   Brussels 32 

Civil   Guards    at    Antw^erp 32 

Count  De  Lalaing,  the  Belgian  Minister  in  London 33 

Battle  Order  of  Division    (Diagram)    35 

Pentagonal  Brialmont  Fort   36 

Triangular   Brialmont   Fort. 36 

The  Modern  Defences  of  Antwerp 37 

Namur     38 

Belgian   Soldiers   in    Brussels 39 

Belgian   Troops    40 

The   Defences   of   Namur 41 

Antwerp    42 

The  Reigning  Grand  Duchess  Marie  Adelaide  of  Luxemburg 44 

M.  Eyschen.     The  Minister  of  State  for  Luxemburg 45 

View  of  Luxemburg 45 

The   Adolph   Bridge   and   Viaduct,   Luxemburg 46 

Palace  of  the  Grand  Duchess  of  Luxemburg 47 

Belgian  Soldiers  Sniping  from  a  Bridge 48 

View  on  the  Riverside,  Luxemburg 49 

One  of  the  Incidents  Which  Impeded  the  German  Advance 50 

Belgian    Expert    Shots    on    a    Fast   Automobile    Who    Were   Continually  Harassing   the 

Germans 51 

Germans  Marching  Through  a  Burning  Village 52 

The  President  of  the  French  Republic,  M.  Poincare 54 

Map  of  Franco-German   Frontier 55 

The  Right  Honourable  H.  H,  Asquith 56 

Coblenz    57 

The  Right   Hon.   Sir  Edward   Grey 58 

The   Austro-Hungarian  Ambassador  in   London,  Count  Mensdorff 59 

The  German  Ambassador  in  London,  Prince  Lichnowsky 59 

The  German  Imperial  Chancellor,  Dr.  Von  Bethmann  Hollweg 60 

The  Chief  of  Staff  of  the  Germany  Army,  General  Von  Moltke 62 

The  German  Foreign  Secretary,  Herr  Von  Jagow 63 

The  French  Pfime  Minister,  M.  Viviani 63 


ILLUSTRATIONS,  MAPS,  ETC. 

PAOE 

King  Peter  of  Servia 64 

The   Crown   Prince   of   Germany 65 

The  Crown  Prince  of  Austria 65 

The   Crown   Prince    of   Bavaria 68 

The  Crown  Prince  of  Germany  in  the  Uniform  of  the  Death's  Head  Hussars 69 

General   Von   Kluck 70 

General  Von   Heeringen 71 

General  Von  Falkenhayn,  Prussian  Minister  of  War 72 

The  Julius  Tower,  Spandau,  where  the  German  War  Chest  was  Stored 73 

General   Von   Emmich 74 

German    Infantry   Marching   Through    Berlin 75 

Field-Marshal  Von   Der   Goltz 75 

Officers  of  the  Death's  Head  Hussars.     The  Crown  Prince  in  the  Centre 76 

The  Kaiser  in   Uhlan   Uniform    77 

A  Trooper  of  the  Death's  Head  Hussars 77 

The  Alexander  Grenadier  Guard  Regiment,  of  which  the  Tsar  was  Colonel.     The  Tsar 

and  the  Kaiser  in  the  Foreground 78 

Duke  Albrecht  of  Wurtemberg 79 

General  Ulrich  Von  Bulow 80 

General    Von    Hansen 81 

German  Siege  Gun 82 

German    Telephone    Rangefinder 84 

Germans    Taking   Observations 84 

General  Von  Einem 85 

German   Siege   Gun   in   Transit / 85 

Map  of  Territorial  Distribution  of  German  Army  Corps  Areas 86,     87 

Colour  Sergeant,  Alexander  Grenadier  Guard  Regiment 88 

General  Von  Hindenburg 88 

German    Siege    Howitzer 89 

Herr  Krupp  Von   Bohlen  und  Halbach 91 

New   German    Bomb-Gun 91 

Bomb-Gun  Ready  for  Firing 91 

German  Military  Motor  Car.  Gun  in  Position  for  Firing  at  Aeroplanes 92 

General  Von  Moltke,  Chief  of  the  Great  General  StaflF  of  the  German  Army 93 

Prince  Von  Bulow   94 

Uhlans   95 

Corps    (Diagram)    96,     97 

German    Field    Battery 98 

The  Prussian  Goose  Step 99 

German  Military  Motor  Car,  Armed  with  a  Krupp  Gun  for  Firing  at  Aeroplanes 99 

Concealed  German   Artillery 100 

Members  of  the  German  Red  Cross  Corps 101 

German  Transport    102 

Fortifications  of  the  Rhine  Frontier 103 

German  Field  Post-Office 104 

Prince  of  Lippe 105 

German  Infantry  Celebrating  Sedan  Day  in   Berlin 105 

General  Gallieni,  Military  Governor  of  Paris  in  1914 108 

General  D'Amade   109 

The  Kaiser  Instructing  His  Generals    110 

General   de   Castelnau    HI 

German    Field    Artillery 112 

German  Medical  Corps  and  Field  Kitchen  Crossing  a  Pontoon  Bridge 113 

Phases  of  a  German  "Envelopment"  Movement    (Diagram) 113 

German  Infantry  About  to  Attack 114 

A    Cuirassier   with   Carbine 114 

German  War  Rocket  Photography 115 

German  Cavalry  Taking  Up  Positions 116 

In  the  Krupp  Works  at  Essen 117 

French  Fortress  Artillery.     Charging  a  95  mm.  Gun 118 

French  Fortress  Artillery.     Officers  watching  effect  of  fire 118 

French  Armoured  Train  Car.    The  upper  picture  shows  the  Observation  Tower  raised..   119 

French  Mobilization.    Drawing  up  Orders  in  a  Railway  Car 120 

French  Heavy  Artillery 121 

General  Bonnal.     The  Eminent  French  Strategist 121 

M.  Messimy.    French  Minister  for  War  at  the  Outbreak  of  Hostilities 122 

French   Fortress   Artillery — 22   cm.   Mortars 122 

A  View  of  the  Battlefield'  Near  Sezanne 123 

Part  of  a  Battery  of  155  mm.  Remailho  Q.F.  Guns 123 

A  French  Infantryman  Showing  Modern  Equipment 124 

French  Officer  Instructing  His  Soldiers  Before  Going  Into  Action 124 

French  Infantry  in  Action 125 

Corps   Deployment    (Diagram) 125 

Zouaves    Working    Mitrailleuse 126 

French   Mountain   Artillery 126 

A  French  Gun  Travelling  over  Rough  Ground 127 

H.  R.   H.  The  Prince  of  Wales 128 

Field  Marshal  Earl  Roberts   131 

Brigadier-General  H.  H.  Wilson 132 

General  Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien 134 


ILLUSTRATIONS,  MAPS,  ETC. 

PAGE 

Major-General  Allenby    I34, 

Field  Marshall  General  Sir  John  French I35 

Major-General   Robb    136 

Major-General  Pulteney    136 

General    Sir    Ian    Hamilton I37 

Lt.-General  Sir  Douglas   Haig I37 

Brigadier-General  Sir  Philip  Chetwode I39 

View  of  Salisbury  Plain I39 

Army  Motor  Cyclists 140 

London   Scottish    Rifles 141 

Make  up  of  a  Division    (Diagram) 142 

60-Pounder   in   Action I43 

Irish  Guards    I43 

Dublin    Light    Infantry I44 

Queen's   Own   Oxford   Hussars 14t 

General  Sir   Charles  Douglas I45 

Gordon  Highlanders   I45 

A  Maxim  Gun  on  New  Tripod 146 

Cavalry  Division    (Diagram) 146 

Major-General  Sir  Archibald  Murray 147 

British  Troops  at  Havre    148 

Fifth  Lancers    147 

Canadian   Troops,  The  Queen's   Rifles 149 

Australian    Commonwealth    Horse 151 

Hon.  Samuel  Hughes,  Canadian  Minister  of  Defence 151 

New  Zealand  Mounted   Rifles 152 

The  Governor-General's  Bodyguard   (Canada) 152 

Sir  Robert  Borden,  Prime  Minister  of  Canada 153 

The  Hon.  T.  Allen,  New  Zealand  Minister  of  Defence 151 

Group  of  all  Units,  Cape  Colony 154 

The  Hon.  E.  D.  Millen,  Australian  Minister  of  Defence 155 

The  Right  Honourable  Sir  Edward  Morris,  Premier  of  Newfoundland 156 

The    Newfoundland    Naval    Reserves , 156 

General  the  Hon.  J.  C.  Smuts,  Minister  of  Defence  Union  of  South  Africa 157 

Type  of  Canadian  Soldier,  Lord  Strathcona's  Corps. 159 

Map  of  the  World,  Showing  British,  French  and  German  Possessions 162 

Typical  Gurkha  Rifles 163 

Group  of  Indian  Officers,  with  Orderlies,  etc.,  and  British  StaflF  Officers  in  mufti 164 

Indian  Cavalry:  a  Typical  Sowar 165 

Group  of  Mohammedan  Officers  and  Men,  Lancers  and  Infantry 167 

A  Veteran  Subada-Major  of  the  45th  Rattray's  Sikhs 168 

H.  M.  The  King 171 

Sir  Pertab  Singh,  the  Veteran  of  the  Indian  Expeditionary  Force 172 

Lord  Hardinge  of  Penshurst,  Viceroy  of  India 173 

The  Marquess  of  Crewe,  Secretary  of  State  for  India 173 

The   Maharaja   of   Mysore 174 

Field-Marshal  Earl  Kitchener,  Secretary  of  State  for  War 176 

Major-General  Sir  Charles  Fergusson,  Commanding  5th  Division 178 

Major-General  Snow,  Commanding  4th  Division 178 

General  Sir  Henry  Hildyard,  late  Commander-in-Chief  in  South  Africa 179 

Major-General   Sir   William   Robertson,   Director   of   Military   Training 179 

Vickers'  Latest  Qulck-Firer.     Firing  600  rounds  per  minute 180 

A  Vickers   75  mm.  Gun 181 

General   Joffre    184 

Generals  Joffre,  Castelnau   (Chief  of  Staff)   and  Pau 185 

M.  Etienne,  a  former  Minister  of  War 186 

M.   Millerand,   the    French   Minister   of   War 186 

General   Pau    188 

General  Percin   189 

General  Michel   189 

A  Mitrailleuse  on  the  Back  of  a  Mule 190 

Plan  of  the  Maubeuge  Fortresses 191 

A   Group   of  Zouaves 193 

Transport  of  a  French  Heavy  Gun 193 

French  Troops  Marching  Through   Paris 194 

Huy 194 

Plan  of  the  Lille  Fortresses 195 

Plan  of  the   Belf ort   Fortresses ' 197 

Belgian  Scouts  on  the   Battlefield  of  Waterloo 198 

Republican  Guards  in  Paris 200 

Dinant   201 

Map  of  France,  showing  the  Territorial  Distributions  of  the  French  Army 202,     203 

Concentrated    Attack    (Diagram)     206 

French  Soldier  with   New  Service   Equipment 206 

French  Artillery.     A  75  mm.  Gun  en  route 207 

French    Artillery   Crossing   a    Road 208 

French  Artillery.     Placing  in  position  a  75  mm.  Gun 209 

French  Patrol  Guarding  Railway  Line 210 

Zouaves    211 

French   Cyclists'   Company 212 


ILLUSTRATIONS,  MAPS,  ETC. 

PAGE 

"Lozenge"  with  first  corps  used  as  strategic  advance-guard    (Diagram) 213 

"Lozenge"  formation  and  its  uses    (Diagram) 214 

French   Motor   Ambulance    215 

General  Chevenet,  Military  Governor  of  Belfort 216 

Liege    218 

Liege    219 

Steps  Leading  Up  to  the  Forts,  Liege 220 

General  Leman.    The  Gallant  Defender  of  Liege 221 

The  Queen  of  the  Belgians 223 

Where  the  Germans  Are  Said  to  Have  First  Crossed  the  Meuse 224 

The  Church    at   Vise 225 

Bravo,   Belgium !    227 

Place  St.  Lambert  and  Palace  of  Justice,  Liege 228 

Square  of  the  Virgin,  Liege,  Before  Bombardment 239 

Church  of  St,   Jacques,   Liege 230 

The  Cloisters,  Palace  of  Justice 231 

A  Ruined  Street  in  Liege 232 

Effect  of  German  Shell  Fire 233 

Left  Side  of  the  Famous  Bridge  at  Liege 234 

Right  Side  of  Bridge  at  Liege 235 

Map  of  Liege  and  the  Surrounding  Country 236,  237 

One  of  the  Famous  German  Siege  Guns 238 

Mounting  of  the  Gun  Shown   Above 238 

Dismantled   Cupola   239 

German  Soldiers  Standing  on  One  of  the  Overturned  Belgian  Guns 240 

Ground  Surrounding  One  of  the  Liege  Forts 241 

The   Liege   Forts 242 

Effect  of  Firing  on  Cupolas 243 

No.  1 — Cupola  raised  for  firing.  No.  2 — Cupola  lowered  (Diagram) 244 

Another  Type  of  German  Gun — Siege  Howitzer 245 

One  of  the  Forts  at  Liege  After  Bombardment 246 

Another  View  of  the  Ruined  Bridge 247 

German    Soldiers    Marching   Through    Liege 248 

German  Sentries  on  the  Banks  of  the  Meuse 249 

General   Wonters   and   his   Aides-de-Camp 250 

Belgians  Loading  a   Gun 251 

Belgian  Soldiers  252 

Inside  a  Belgian  Trench 253 

An   11-inch  German  Mortar   254 

Belgian  Soldiers  Firing  at  a  Passing  Aeroplane 255 

Namur,  from  the  Meuse,  before  bombardment 258 

A  Belgian  Look-out  Man 259 

German  Field  Kitchen  Captured  and  Used  by  the  Belgians 260 

Belgian  Soldiers  Having  their  Mid-day  Meal 261 

Belgian  Soldiers  Firing  from  Cover 262 

German  Shells  Bursting  in  a  Field  near  the  Belgian  Position  where  Infantry  were  Con-       * 

cealed    263 

The  Last  Stand  Made  by  the  Belgians  at  Louvain 264 

Germans  Holding  a  Review  in  Ruined  Louvain 265 

The  Church  at  Haellen 266 

The  Village  of  Melle 267 

German  Soldiers  Tending  the  Wounded 268 

Priest  Assisting  the  Wounded  after  the  Battle  of  Hofstade 269 

Homeless 270 

German  Troops  Resting  After  the  Fighting  at  Vise 271 

Belgians   Driven   from   their   Homes 272 

German  Troops  Having  their  Mid-day  Meal  in  the  Grande  Place,  Brussels 273 

Belgian  Airmen 274 

German  Infantry  in  the  Square  at  Brussels 275 

Map  to  Illustrate  the  German   Advance  to  Brussels 276,  277 

German  Troops  Outside  the  Bourse,  Brussels 278 

M.  Max,  Burgomaster  of  Brussels 279 

Count  Von  Arnim,  who  was  Military  Governor  of  Brussels 279 

A    Common    Sight    in    Distressed    Belgium:      Villagers    Flying    from    the    Approaching 

Germans   ^^^ 

Destitute  Belgians  281 

Map  to  Illustrate  the  French  Operations  in  Alsace 282 

Panoramic  View  of  Mulhausen 284 

Altkirch,  Looking  Towards  Saint  Morain 285 

A  Train  of  Wounded  at  Nancy 286 

View  of  Nancy  from  the  Hotel  de  Ville 287 

Colonel  Von  Renter,  who  supported  von  Forstner 288 

Return  of  Colonel  Von  Renter's  Notorious  Regiment  to  Zabern 289 

Lieutenant  von  Forstner  of  Alsace ^^^ 

The  Citadel   at   Belfort *J^ 

Captured  German  Guns  in  Belfort ^^^ 

The  Famous  Military  Monument  at  Belfort ^^"^ 

A  Typical  View  in  the  Vosges ^ 

Generals  Joffre,  Michel,  Gallieni,  and  Pau -^^ 

Belgian  Soldiers  on  the  March 


ILLUSTRATIONS,  MAPS,  ETC. 

PAGE 

Fugitives  on  the  Road 299 

Louvain.     General  View  after  Bombardment 300 

Bridge  over  the  Meuse.    Showing  the  Destroyed  Centre 301 

Dinant.     As  it  Appeared  before  Bombardment 303 

Dinant  after  Bombardment.     Remains  of  the  Famous  Church  and  Bridge 303 

Refugees  on  the  Road  between  Malines  and  Brussels  304 

Namur.    The  Citadel  from  the  River 305 

Louvain.     Sanctuary  of  the  Cathedral.     A  Priest  is  Seen  Standing  by  the  Ruins  of  the 

Altar  306 

The  Last  Supper,  by  Dierck  Bouts.     In  the  Church  of  St.  Pierre,  Louvain 307 

The  Martyrdom  of  St.  Erasmus,  by  Dierck  Bouts 308 

Louvain.     Ruins  of  the  Vestibule  of  the  Library 309 

Louvain.     The  old  Church  of  St.  Pierre  before  its  Destruction 310 

Louvain.     The   Church  of  St.  Pierre  as  the  Germans  left   it.   The  Hotel  de  Ville  on  the  right 

was  practically  Uninjured 311 

Destruction  of  Louvain 313 

Louvain,     Destruction  in  the  Rue  de  Namur 314 

Louvain.     Remains  of  part  of  the  University  buildings 315 

Louvain.     Interior  of  the  famous  Library  before  its  Destruction 316 

Malines.     Removing  a  Picture  by  Van  Dyck  to  a  Place  of  Safety 317 

Malines  Cathedral.    The  Famous  Carved  Pulpit ;  318 

Malines.     Interior  of  Cathedral 319 

St.  Rombaut,  Malines 320 

Malines  Cathedral.     Window  destroyed  by  German  shell 321 

The  Crucifixion,  by  Van  Dyck.     In  the  Church  of  Notre  Dame,  at  Termonde 321 

Malines.     The  Old  Brussels  Gate 322 

Termonde.     The   Railway  Bridge 323 

Belgian  Soldier  Standing  on  the  Ruins  of  Bridge 323 

Termonde.     Re-occupied  by  the  Belgian  Soldiers 324 

Termonde.     Scene  of  Destruction 325 

Hotel  de  Ville,  Lierre 326 

Royal  Marine  Light  Infantry  Arrive  on  the  Continent 328 

A  Section  of  the  Royal  Flying  Corps  at  the  Front 329 

British  Troops  at  the  Front 330 

Earth  works  for  Infantry  Defence.     (Diagram) 331 

A  Belgian  Cart  Drawn  by  Dogs 331 

German  Prisoners  Captured  by  the  British 332 

British  Field  Gun 333 

Meaux  from  the  River  Marne 334 

A  British  Outpost 335 

Entrenching  n  60-Pounder  Gun 336 

British  Artillery  on  the  March 337 

A  Railway    Wreck    338 

A  French  Red  Cross  Train  Derailed  and  Precipitated  into  River 339 

German  Officers  in  an  Elaborate  Splinter-proof  Entrenchment 340 

British  Soldiers  in  the  Trenches 341 

German  Infantry  Advancing 342 

A  German  Sheltered  Trench 343 

British  Wounded  Awaiting  Removal  to  Hospital  Base 344 

British  Wounded  being  Conveyed  to  a  Hospital  Train 345 

Map.    The  Second  Part  of  the  British  Retreat  from  Mons 346,  347 

Wanton  Destruction  Caused  by  German  Soldiers  in  a  Chateau  near  Malines 348 

Interior  of  Barcy  Church  Wrecked  by  the  Germans 349 

Maxim  Section  on  the  March 350 

British  Soldiers  Fixing  a  Machine  Gun  in  Position 351 

Night  Fight  in  the  Street  of  Landrecies 352 

English  Position  at  Mons.   (Diagram) 353 

The  Graveyards  of  the  Battlefields 353 

French  Heavy  Guns  in  a  Village  Near  Arras 355 

After  a  Battle 357 

Paris.     For  Defensive  Use  Trenches  were  Dug 358 

Saving  the  Guns  in  the  Action  at  Compiegne 359 

French  Army  on  the  March  in  the  Champagne  District 360 

Remains  of  a  German  Motor  Convoy 361 

Map  to  Illustrate  the  First  Part  of  the  British  Retreat  from  Mons 362 

Steinhauer.     The  Kaiser's  Master  Spy 363 

Maubeuge.     A  Cupola  Fort  after  Bombardment 364 

French  Wounded  Soldiers  Detraining  and  Boarding  a  Hospital  Ship 365 


PREFACE 


THIS  VOLUME  IS  COMPLETE  IN  ITSELF 

THIS  book  marks  the  beginning  of  what  will  probably  be  for  many  years  the 
most  comprehensive  and  authoritative  history  of  the  Great  War.  Interest- 
ing as  is  the  present  volume,  "The  Battlefield  of  Europe,"  the  subsequent 
volumes,  recording  various  dramatic  phases  of  the  war,  are  likely  to  be  even  more 
engrossing. 

Pre-eminent  as  a  gatherer  and  interpreter  of  news,  and  thoroughly  competent 
to  deal  with  historical  subjects,  The  Times,  of  London,  is  the  institution  that  would 
reasonably  be  expected  to  produce  the  one  great  history  of  the  most  stupendous 
struggle  the  world  has  ever  seen. 

The  average  size  of  The  Times  each  week-day,  not  counting  the  many  and 
elaborate  supplements  on  a  variety  of  subjects,  is  twenty  full  pages.  According  to 
the  pressure  of  news,  the  number  of  pages  varies  from  fourteen  to  thirty-six.  Ex- 
pansion beyond  the  latter  number  is  considered  by  the  publishers  impracticable, 
because  the  capacity  of  the  reader  has  its  limitations.  The  mechanical  facilities  of 
the  paper,  however,  are  so  complete  that  it  would  be  easy  to  go  beyond  the  thirty- 
six-page  limit.  Each  ten  pages  of  The  Times  contains  about  as  much  reading  mat- 
ter as  the  ordinary  standard  novel  of  90,000  to  100,000  words.  Thus  every  day 
the  reader  of  The  Times  is  offered  an  average  amount  of  matter  equivalent  to 
two  complete  novels ;  and  a  thirty-six-page  issue  contains  as  much  reading  as  three 
and  a  half  novels.  In  a  single  recent  year  The  Times  with  its  supplements  printed 
the  equivalent  of  more  than  seven  hundred  novels. 

The  chief  importance  of  the  paper,  however,  is  by  no  means  in  its  physical  size, 
but  rather  in  its  far-reaching  ability  to  gather  the  news  of  the  world,  and  the  high 
standards  maintained  by  its  numerous  editors  and  correspondents.  These  consid- 
erations give  the  paper  its  extraordinary  influence  throughout  Europe,  and  re- 
cently lead  a  Berlin  journalistic  authority  to  write,  in  commenting  upon  the  recent 
sixty-four  page  special  number  of  The  Times,  celebrating  its  forty  thousandth 
issue:  "With  this  number  The  Times  has  proved  once  more  that  it  continues  to 
hold  its  place  at  the  very  head  of  all  newspapers"  ("dass  sie  noch  immer  an  der 
Spitze  aller  Zeitungen  steht"). 

VAST  EDITORIAL   ORGANIZATION 

The  vast  editorial  work  of  The  Times  is  of  necessity  divided  into  departments, 
each  with  its  own  staff,  and  each  as  independent  of  the  others  as  the  various  units 
of  an  army  in  active  service.  To  quote  a  recent  commentator  on  this  subject: 
"The  Editor  is  the  commander-in-chief,  and  with  his  assistants,  secretaries,  sub- 
editors and  leader  writers  (who  constitute  the  headquarters  staff),  he  inspires  and 
controls  the  general  conduct  and  policy  of  the  paper.  Since  to  write  to  The  Times 
became  the  chief  refuge  of  the  aggrieved  Briton,  in  every  part  of  the  world,  the 
Editor  has  received  an  ever-increasing  volume  of  correspondence."  Much  of  this  is 
handled  by  the  various  departments,  but  a  great  deal  is  handled  at  headquarters. 
Although  many  letters  are  published,  they  represent  so  very  small  a  proportion 
of  those  received  that  i\.  is  something  of  a  distinction  to  have  an  unsolicited  com- 
munication accepted  for  publication. 

Besides  the  various  editorial  staffs  and  the  special  departments  responsible 
for  the   supplements.   The  Times  has   fourteen    distinct    editorial    departments, 


PREFACE. 

namely :  Foreign,  Military,  Naval,  Home  News,  Parliamentary,  Law,  Police,  Sport- 
ing, Court  and  Personal,  Ecclesiastical,  Dramatic,  Art,  Finance,  and  Commercial 
and  Shipping. 

WORLD-WIDE  FOREIGN  NEWS  SERVICE 

The  Foreign  Department  of  the  London  Times  has  been  famous  since  the 
foundation  of  the  paper  in  1785.  Nelson's  great  naval  victory  over  the  French  and 
Spanish  fleets  off  Trafalgar  in  1805  was  first  announced  in  the  columns  of  The 
Times.  Its  dispatches  from  the  field  of  Waterloo,  June  18,  1815,  announced  the 
downfall  of  Napoleon  several  hours  before  the  regular  couriers  reached  the  Gov- 
ernment officials  in  London.  The  amazingly  outspoken  letters  of  the  brilliant  war 
correspondent,  William  Howard  Russell,  bitterly  criticizing  the  conduct  of  the 
Crimean  campaign,  when  Great  Britain  with  her  alhes  was  pitted  against  Russia, 
exemplified  the  extraordinary  independence  and  overwhelming  influence  of  The 
Times. 

When  the  Congress  of  Berlin,  which  included  delegates  from  Germany,  Austria, 
Russia,  Great  Britain,  France,  Italy,  and  Turkey,  was  in  session,  under  the  presi- 
dency of  Bismarck,  the  famous  London  Times  correspondent,  de  Blowitz,  was  the 
chief  figure  among  the  European  correspondents  of  the  day.  Possessing  sources 
of  information  more  complete  than  most  of  the  rulers  and  diplomats  with  whom  he 
daily  came  in  contact,  he  was  in  the  habit  of  supplying  to  his  paper  intelligence 
of  the  most  valuable  description.  One  of  his  most  notable  achievements,  said  to 
be  without  a  parallel  in  the  history  of  journalism,  was  the  publication  in  the  Lon- 
don Times  on  July  13,  1878,  of  the  text  of  the  Treaty  of  Berlin  a  couple  of  hours 
before  it  was  signed  by  the  congress  of  ministers  in  Berlin.  This  same  de  Blowitz 
of  The  Times  held  the  key  to  a  multitude  of  state  secrets  and  is  credited  with  hav- 
ing averted  a  second  Franco-Prussian  war  in  1875. 

During  one  year,  1898,  the  foreign  intelligence  of  The  Times  cost  about 
$250,000.  A  single  cable  message,  on  the  subject  of  a  revolution  in  Argentina  cost 
$6,000.  During  the  Boer  War  The  Times  supphed  its  readers  with  war  dis- 
patches from  some  twenty-four  correspondents. 

Although  The  Times  is  celebrated  for  the  reliable  and  brilliant  work  of  its 
own  correspondents,  yet,  as  a  well-informed  writer  has  pointed  out,  "part  of  the 
business  of  the  editorial  organization  of  every  newspaper  nowadays  is  to  make  the 
best  possible  use  of  the  invaluable  assistance  which  the  various  news  associations 
and  press  agencies  place  at  its  disposal.  The  Times  subscribes  for  the  service  of 
some  two  score  of  such  associations.  .  .  .  To  the  brains  of  the  members  of  the 
paper's  own  staff,  therefore,  must  be  added  the  brains  of  all  the  vast  and  highly 
efficient  army  of  contributors  to  each  of  these  associations. 

"The  strength  of  The  Times  has,  of  course,  always  rested,  hardly  less  on  the 
great  ability  of  its  successive  editors,  on  the  excellence  of  its  corps  of  contributors 
which  has  been  organized  with  so  much  judgment  and  so  laboriously  built  up,  but 
the  work  of  this  corps  is  in  these  later  days  supplemented  and,  as  it  were,  but- 
tressed at  every  point  by  the  work  of  the  correspondents  of  all  the  news  associa- 
tions. And  when  it  is  considered  that  each  one  of  all  these  thousands  of  workers 
is  in  his  degree  a  trained  writer  and  a  trained  observer  and  interpreter  of  news — 
each  one  a  man  of  parts  and  education — it  is  probably  safe  to  say  that  there  is  no 
other  institution  in  the  world,  no  department  of  any  government  which  needs  and 
is  daily  fed  by  so  great  a  volume  of  talent  of  so  high  an  order. 

"The  Times  has  naturally,  in  its  long  career,  built  up  a  large  and  valuable 
library.  This  is  reinforced  by  a  special  intelligence  department  in  which  fifteen 
persons  are  constantly  at  work  filing,  cataloguing  and  indexing  information  on  a 
multitude  of  subjects  for  the  use  of  the  staff.  Moreover,  the  complete  file  of  The 
Times  itself  is  a  reference  library  of  the  greatest  value.  The  history  of  The 
Times  begins  with  the  history  of  modern  Europe.  It  has  been  said  that  "no  con- 
siderable historian  has  been  able  to  conduct  his  inquiries  into  any  epoch  within  the 
last  century  and  a  quarter  without  consulting  the  files  of  The  Times." 

More  than  fifty  years  ago  De  Quincy  in  estimating  the  influence  of  the  Del- 
phic Oracle  upon  the  public  mind  of  the  Greece  of  antiquity,  wrote  that  however 


PREFACE. 

influential  it  may  have  been  as  the  great  organ  of  publicity  of  those  ancient  days, 
yet  it  "perhaps  never  rose  to  the  level  of  The  Times." 

PIONEER  STEAM-DRIVEN    PRINTING  PRESS 

The  development  of  The  Times  physically  has  always  kept  in  step  with  the 
growth  of  its  influence.  During  the  period  when  its  vigorous  editorials  were  earn- 
ing it  the  afl^ectionate  but  respectful  nickname,  "The  Thunderer,"  its  proprietor, 
John  Walter,  was  bending  every  energy  to  the  perfecting  of  its  mechanical  equip- 
ment. In  1814,  ^Walter  courageously  became  the  patron  of  a  German  inventor, 
Frederick  Koenig,  who  had  contrived  a  printing  press,  "operated  by  the  steam  en- 
gine," and  capable  of  printing  as  many  as  1100  copies  of  the  paper  in  an  hour. 
The  capacity  of  the  hand  press  then  owned  by  The  Times  was  250  copies  an  hour. 
It  is  worth  noting  that  Walter  paid  full  wages  to  the  operators  of  his  discarded 
hand  press  until  they   could  secure  positions  in  other  shops. 

These  few  notes  on  The  Times  lay  no  claim  to  being  an  adequate  description 
of  the  newspaper  which  for  more  than  a  hundred  years  has  been  an  imposing  insti- 
tution of  the  greatest  authority  and  influence.  But  enough  has  been  said  perhaps 
to  suggest  that,  when  such  an  institution  sets  itself  the  task  of  producing  a  cur- 
rent history  of  the  war,  at  once  popular  and  authoritative,  the  result  will  be  highly 
acceptable  to  the  public. 

While  striving  to  be  popular  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word,  and  endeavoring 
to  discuss  the  political  factors  which  have  led  up  to  the  crisis,  and  the  military  oper- 
ations of  the  war  in  a  manner  which  will  prove  useful  to  those  who  have  not  hith- 
erto followed  European  policy  with  any  very  close  attention,  this  history,  as  is  dem- 
onstrated by  the  present  volume,  "The  Battlefield  of  Europe,"  will  also  aim  at  secur- 
ing a  genuine  position  as  a  work  of  reference.  It  is  an  account  written  by  men  of 
broad  experience  in  political,  military,  and  naval  matters,  and  contains  a  great  deal 
of  first-hand  material  which  will  be  of  real  value  to  historians  of  the  future. 

UNIQUE  FACILITIES  OF  "THE  TIMES" 

As  has  been  intimated.  The  Times  possesses  unique  facilities  for  supplying  a 
narrative  of  the  kind  here  indicated.  Its  staff  of  foreign  correspondents  has  for 
years  been  celebrated  for  the  knowledge  and  insight  into  political  and  social  condi- 
tions which  its  members  possess.  Their  efforts  have  combined  to  make  the  foreign 
pages  of  The  Times  probably  the  most  accurate  review  of  current  foreign  affairs 
published  in  any  paper  in  Europe.  Equally  well  known  are  the  military  and  naval 
correspondents  of  The  Times  who  are,  by  universal  consent,  among  the  most  bril- 
liant exponents  of  their  respective  subjects. 

The  services  of  the  special  staff  of  war  correspondents  now  acting  for  The 
Times  in  the  theatre  of  war  are  available  for  this  history.  Descriptions  of  eye- 
witnesses of  the  actual  scenes  of  battle  will  be  employed  in  this  history.  A  word 
should  also  be  said  about  the  maps  which  appear  in  the  present  work.  They  are  in 
all  cases  specially  designed  to  illustrate  the  immediate  points  under  review  at  the 
moment,  and  special  pains  have  been  taken  to  secure  their  accuracy  in  every 
particular. 

It  is,  for  obvious  reasons,  impossible  that  a  history  of  contemporary  events, 
many  of  the  most  of  which  are  shrouded  in  the  fog  of  war,  can  lay  claims  to  the 
fullness  of  information,  and  consequently  the  stability  of  judgment,  which  are 
within  reach  of  a  historian  writing  many  years  after  the  events  have  taken  place. 
But  it  is  the  endeavor  of  the  writer  of  this  history  to  approximate  as  nearly  as 
may  be  to  the  historical  standard  attainable  in  ordinary  circumstances,  and  so  far 
as  the  conditions  allow  to  present  a  faithful  record  of  the  impressions  of  the  time, 
and  of  the  progress  of  the  struggle  which  is  the  subject  of  their  narrative.  The 
Times  aims  to  lay  before  the  public  the  most  accurate  and  complete  account  of  the 
war  that  will  for  a  long  time  be  available. 

Publishers  op  the  Amekican  Edition. 


CHAPTER  I. 

POLITICAL  ANTECEDENTS 
TO   THE   WAR. 


BniTH  OF  German  world -policy  —  Germany  and  Russia  —  Germany  in  South  America 
AND  IN  Africa  —  The  Kruger  telegram  —  Exploitation  of  the  Boer  War  —  The 
Franco -Russian  Alliance  —  Anglo-French  Agreement  of  1904  —  Anglo -Russian  Agree- 
ment OF  1907  —  Eastern  crisis  of  1908-9  and  Germany's  armed  diplomacy  —  Agadir 
crisis  of  1911  —  Growth  of  the  German  Navy  —  The  Balkan  wars  of  1912-13  — 
Disablement  of  Turkey  —  Germany  and  England  —  Increase  of  the  German  Army 
— June  28,  1914,  murder  of  the  Archduke  Ferdinand  —  Austrian  ultimatum  to 
Servia  —  Analysis  of  the  Parliamentary  White  Paper — Attitude  of  Germany  — 
The  "  INFAMOUS "  proposal  —  Appeal  of  the  King  of  the  Belgians  to  King 
George    V.   —   The    British   ultimatum  —   German  feeling. 


NEVER  probably  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  not  even  in  the  last  years  of 
the  Napoleonic  domination,  has  there 
taken  place  such  a  display  of  wai*- 
like  passion  as  manifested  itself  in  the  most 
civilized  countries  of  Europe  at  the  beginning 
of  August,  1914.  Then  was  seen  how  frail 
Were  the  commercial  and  political  forces  on 
which  modern  cosmopoUtanism  had  fondly 
relied  for  the  obliteration  of  national  barriers. 
The  elaborate  system  of  European  finance 
which,  in  the  opinion  of  some,  had  rendered 
War  impossible  no  more  availed  to  avert  the 
catastrophe  than  the  Utopian  aspirations  of 
international  Socialism,  or  the  links  with  which 
a  common  culture  had  bound  together  the  more 


educated  classes  of  the  Continent.  The  world 
of  credit  set  to  work  to  adapt  itself  to  condi- 
tions which  seemed,  for  a  moment,  to  threaten 
it  with  annihilation.  The  voices  of  the  advo- 
cates of  a  World-wide  fraternity  and  equality 
were  drowned  in  a  roar  of  hostile  preparation.  The 
great  gulfs  that  separate  Slav,  Latin,  Teuton, 
and  Anglo-Saxon  Were  revealed  ;  and  the  forces 
which  decide  the  destinies  of  the  world  were 
gauntly  expressed  in  terms  of  racial  antagonism. 
Yet,  though  the  racial  factor  was  the  pre- 
dominating force  in  this  tremendous  struggle, 
it  was  nevertheless  the  instrument  of  varying 
policies  and  ideals.  Russia  stood  forth  as  the 
representative  and  protectress  of  Slav  nation- 
ality and  rehgion  against  Teutonic  encroachment 


6     :,/..^l;y^^;':'^HE  ;'-Ti'ME8    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


H.M.    THE   KING. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


H.M.    THE    QUEEN. 


[Thomson, 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


LUXEMBURG. 


and  oppression.  France,  bound  to  Russia  by 
the  exigencies  of  national  existence,  marched  to 
support  an  ally  of  alien  faith  and  race.  Austria 
went  to  wax  in  the  hope  of  cementing  her  ill- 
compacted  dominions  by  the  subjugation  of  a 
race  akin  to  a  portion  of  her  own  subjects.  Eng- 
land, the  Mother  of  a  World-Empire  "  brought 
forth  in  liberty,"  stood  forward  as  the  friend  of 
small  nations,  and  as  the  upholder  of  the 
European  balance  which  she  had  once  main- 
tained against  the  ambition  of  Spain  and 
France,  and  with  which  her  own  security  was 
inextricably  involved.  Together  with  France, 
now  freed  from  her  old  dreams  of  European 
domination,  she  appeared  as  the  protagonist 
of  European  democracy  and  liberty  against  the 
militarism  of  Germany,  as  the  upholder  of 
political  idealism  against  the  materialism  of 
Prussia.  Germany,  nurtured  on  the  doctrines 
of  Clausewitz  and  Treitschke,  strong  in  her 
belief  in  the  sufficiency  of  the  law  of  force 
and  in  her  power  to  fulfil  its  con- 
ditions, confident  in  the  memory  of 
earlier  successes  and  in  the  energies 
of  the  Teutonic  peoples,  aspired  through 
European  victory  to  world-wide  dominion. 
Like  Napoleon  she  looked  for  ships,  commerce 
and  colonies ;  like  him  she  prepared  to  wage 
war  on  land  and  sea,  and  like  him  in  the  days 
of  his  decadence,  and  forgetful  of  the  ally  of 
1813,  she  strove  to  strengthen  her  moral  position 
by  posing  as  the  bulwark  of  Europe  against 
Muscovite  barbarism.  Alone  of  the  great 
powers  Italy  stood  aside.     Diplomatically  she 


was  justifed  in  excusing  herself  from  joining 
the  other  members  of  the  Triple  Alliance  ©n 
the  ground  that  she  was  not  boxmd  to  partici- 
pate in  a  war  of  aggression  ;  nationally  th© 
repugnance  of  her  people  for  the  imnatural 
alliance  with  the  German  Powers  made  joint 
action  with  them  impossible.  The  smaller 
countries  announced  their  neutrality  ;  the 
precariousness  of  their  position  was  sufficiently 
emphasized  by  the  fact  that  most  of  them, 
including  Switzerland,  Sweden,  Turkey,  Holland, 
and  Belgium,  thought  it  necessary  to  accom- 
pany the  announcement  by  a  complete  mobiliza- 
tion. 

One  feeling,  apparent  from  the  first  and 
deepening  in  strength  and  volume  as  the  war 
proceeded,  dominated  not  merely  the  populations 
allied  against  the  German  Powers,  but  those 
beyond  the  area  of  conflict.  This  was  antagonism 
to  Germany  as  the  author  of  the  war  and  to 
the  system  for  which  her  Government  stood. 
Outside  her  frontiers  and  those  of  Austria 
hardly  one  representative  voice  was  raised  in 
her  justification.  Her  arrogance,  her  cynical 
disregard  for  the  rights  of  others,  her  dis- 
graceful treatment  of  ambassadOTs  and 
foreigners,  her  use  of  brute  force,  estranged 
sympathy  and  ro\ised  against  her  believers 
in  humanity  and  liberty  in  all  parts  of  the  world. 
The  American  Press  was  not  the  least  loud 
in  its  denunciations.  In  the  words  of  Colonel 
Stoffel,  th«  French  military  attach^  at  Berlin 
before  the  war  of  1870,  it  was  felt  that  the 
Prussians  were  a  race  "  sans  passions  g6n6reuses." 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


9 


THE  GRAND  DUCHESS  OF  LUXEMBURG 


The  nobler  qualities  of  the  German  people 
were  forgotten  ;  and  they  were  simply  regarded 
as  the  instrument  of  a  system  dangerous  to 
all  that  was  best  in  Eviropean  civilization. 
The  desperate  opposition  that  their  soldiers 
were  to  encounter  from  the  countries  they 
invaded  was  the  measure  of  the  intensity  of 
this  feeling.  The  omission  of  the  directors 
of  German  policy  to  reckon  with  it  was  the 
measure  of  their  statesmanship. 

The  war  was,  above  all,  Imperial  Germany's 
war,  not  merely  because  throughout  the  final 
crisis  she  alone  of  all  the  I'owers  might  have 
averted  it  and  did  not,  but  because  it  was 
the  direct  and  inevitable  outcome  of  the  trans- 
formation which  her  whole  policy  underwent 
during  the  reign  of  William  II. 

Bismarck,  who  deliberately  fought  three 
wars,  1864,  1866,  and  1870,  in  order  to  create 
a  German  Empire  and  restore  German  national 
unity  iinder  the  aegis  of  Prussia,  was  a  man  of 
blood  and  iron,  but  he  was  also  a  great  states- 
man. So  long  as  he  remaitied  at  the  helm  the 
policy  of  Imperial  Germany  was  mainly  con- 
fined to  the  undiminished  maintenance  of  the 
dominant  position  she  had  acquired  in  Europe 
after  1870.  This  object  he  attained  by  sub- 
stituting where  he  could  binding  alliances  for 
mere  friendships,  whilst  his  diplomacy  labovired 
lonceasingly  to  keep  aU  other  Powers,  as  far 
as  possible,  apart,  and  so  to  prevent  the  estab- 


lishment of  any  other  system  of  alliances  than 
the  Triple  Alliance,  which  Germany  dominated. 
It  was,  in  the  main,  a  policy  of  conservative 
concentration,  and  he  never  concealed  his 
reluctance  to  take  the  risks  of  speculative 
entanglements,  whether  in  the  Balkans  or 
beyond  the  seas,  which  might  have  endangered 
his  main  position. 

This  did  not  satisfy  the  Emperor  William's 
more  ardent  imagination.  His  ambition  was 
to  transform  the  German  Empire  from  a  purely 
continental  Power  into  a  world  Power.  This 
involved  the  substitution  of  a  world  policy 
for  Bismarck's  policy  of  Eviropean  concentra- 
tion. Let  us  recall  briefly  the  chief  stages  of 
the  "  Imperial  Rake's  Progress."  The  old 
chancellor  was  dismissed  in  1890,  two  years 
after  the  Kaiser's  accession  to  the  throne. 
The  famous  "  re -insurance "  Treaty  with 
Russia  was  dropped  and  with  it  the  coping- 
stone  of  the  diplomatic  system  which  Bismarck's 
genius  had  built  up.  The  Kaiser  preferred  to 
rely    on    the    Asiatic    interests    of    Russia    to 


THE  FRENCH  AMBASSADOR  IN  LONDON, 
M.     PAUL    CAMBON 


10 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


THE    EMPEROR    WILLIAM    II. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


11 


paralyse  her  influence  in  Europe  and  so  his 
fiBst  dra«iatic  appearance  on  the  larger  stage 
of  world-policy  was  his  cooperation  with  Russia 
in  the  Far  Ea  st  at  the  close  of  the  war  between 
China  and  Japan,  when  he  joined  in  1895 
with  Russia  and  her  more  unwilling  ally,  France, 
in  imposing  upon  the  Japanese  the  surrender  of 
a  large  part  of  the  spoils  of  victory.  China  herself 
was  soon  to  feel  the  weight  of  the  "  mailed 
fist "  in  the  seizure  of  Kiaochao  in  1897,  and 
again  in  1900  in  the  dispatch  of  a  large  expe- 


America,  and  if  he  could  have  succeeded  in,  his 
attempts  to  use  Great  Britain  against  the  United 
States  at  the  time  of  the  Spanish -American  war 
of  1898  he  would  soon  have  driven  the  "  mailed 
fist  "  through  the  Monroe  doctrine.  But  of  this 
phase  of  Gennan  world  policy  the  annexation  of 
Samoa  remains  as  the  only  important  achieve- 
ment. 0\ir  loyalty  to  our  American  kinsmen 
forced  him  to  fall  back  upon  Africa  as  the  mor© 
promising  field  for  German  expansion.  There, 
however,  Great  Britain  inevitably  blocked  his 


BERLIN. 


ditionary  force  which,  if  it  arrived  too  late 
for  the  rehef  of  the  Peking  Legations,  spread 
terror  of  the  German  name  throughout  Northern 
China.  The  severe  blow  inflicted  by  the 
Japanese  arms  on  Russia's  policy  of  adventure 
in  Asia,  which  the  Kaiser  had  steadily  en- 
coviraged,  was  a  serious  check  to  Germany's 
political  calculations,  but  it  scarcely  affected 
the  campaign  of  peaceful  penetration  which 
she  was  waging  at  the  same  time  for  the  econo- 
mic conquest  of  China,  chiefly  at  the  expense 
of  British  interests. 

But  it  was  not  only  in  the  Far  East 
that  Germany  was  pegging-out  elaims  for 
"  a  place  in  the  sun."  For  a  moment  the 
Kaiser    undoubtedly   cast    his    eye    on    South 


way  by  her  mere  presence.  Her  difficulties 
could  alone  be  Germany's  opportvmities.  So 
whilst  Germany  picked  up  such  crumbs  as  she 
could  in  West  and  Central  and  East  Africa  with- 
out coming  actually  to  loggerheads  with  Great 
Britain,  the  Kaiser  eagerly  watched  and  en- 
couraged the  growing  estrangement  between 
Boer  and  Briton.  The  Jameson  Raid  pave  him, 
as  he  thought,  his  opportunity,  and  the  notorious 
Kruger  telegram  was  the  first  open  challenge 
fltmg  to  British  power.  It  miscarried,  partly 
owing  to  the  unexpected  outburst  of  feeling  it 
provoked  throughout  the  British  Empire,  and 
partly  owing  to  the  failure  of  German  diplomacy 
to  elicit  any  cordial  response  in  Paris  or  St.' 
Petersburg.     During  the  Boer  War  the  Kaiser 


12 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


THE  LATE  ARCHDUKE  FRANCIS 
FERDINAND. 

proceeded  more  cautiously.  Again  France  and 
Russia  declined  to  swallow  the  baits  he  dangled 
before  them,  and  Germany  was  not  yet  in  a  posi- 
tion to  measure  herself  tmaided  against  the 
naval  power  of  Britain.  But  the  great  wave 
of  Anglophobia  which  had  been  allowed  to 
sweep  over  Grcrmany  during  the  Boer  War  did  net 
spend  itself  wholly  in  vain.  It  served  to 
carry  safely  into  port  the  schemes  which  the 
Kaiser  had  already  formed  for  a  German  fleet 
that  should  at  least  give  pause  to  the  greatest 
sea-power.  "  The  Trident,"  he  declared, 
"  must  be  in  our  fist,"  and  from  that  moment 
Germany  began  steadily  to  face  the  ultimate 
issue,  which  the  greatest  of  her  modem  historians 
had  already  clearly  defined.  "  When  we  have 
settled  our  accounts  with  France  and  with 
Russia,  will  come  the  last  and  greatest  settle- 
ment of  accoimts — ^with  Great  Britain." 

Combined  with  the  wonderful  development 
of  German  commerce  and  industry  the  Kaiser's 
world -policy,  which  had  achieved  not  a  few 
brilliant  if  somewhat  superficial  successes,  was 
well  calculated  to  intoxicate  a  nation  which 
h£id  been  raised  within  40  years  on  to  an 
astovinding  pinnacle  of  material  power  and 
prosperity.  But  it  was  imdermining  the  very 
foundations  of  the  Bismarckian  edifice.  The 
Kaiser's  successive  excursions  and  alainmis  were 
felt  on  all  sides  to  constitute  a  new  danger 
to  the  peace  of  tho  world,   and  the  Powers 


which  the  great  Chancellor  had  succeeded  in 
keeping  asunder  began  gradually  to  draw  nearer 
together.  First  had  come  the  Franco-Russian 
Alliance,  but  so  long  as  there  were  long-standing 
differences  and  jealousies  between  the  two 
allies  and  Great  Britain  their  alliance  could 
be  regarded  in  Berlin  as  scarcely  less  threaten- 
ing to  Great  Britain  than  to  Germany.  The 
outlook  was  completely  changed  when  first 
France  and  then  Russia  decided  to  compose 
their  differences  and  to  substitute  friendly 
understandings  for  their  old  antagonisms. 

The  measure  of  Germany's  wrath  when  the 
Anglo-French  Agreement  of  1904  was  an- 
nounced to  the  world  was  gauged  in  the  follow- 
ing year  by  the  violent  quarrel  she  picked 
with  France  over  Morocco,  where  hitherto  she 
had  never  professed  to  have  any  substantial 
interests.  By  a  campaign  of  brutal  intimidation 
in  Paris  she  succeeded  in  driving  from  office 
the  Minister  who  had  actually  signed  the  Anglo- 
French  Agreement,  M.  Delcasse,  but  thanks 
to  the  loyal  support  which  this  cotmtry 
gave  to  France  at  the  Algeciras  Conference 
Germany  failed  utterly  in  her  chief  object. 
The  Anglo-French  entente  which  she  had  hoped 
to  break  up  had  only  been  strengthened  by  that 
ordeal.  Three  years  later  the  Anglo -Russian 
Agreement  further  and  still  more  grievously 
disturbed  Germany's  calculations.     Here  indeed 


THE    LATE   DUCHESS   OF    HOHENBERG. 

IE.  Q.  tioppi. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


13 


SERAJEVO. 


she  had  been  hoisted  on  her  own  petard. 
For  Russia's  policy  of  adventure  in  Asia,  which 
the  Kaiser  had  spared  no  pains  to  encourage  in 
order  to  divert  her  energies  from  Europe,  had 
not  only  landed  her  in  disaster,  but  had  com- 
pelled her  to  reconsider  her  whole  position,  and 
induced  the  chastened  mood  in  which  she  would 
alone  have  been  willing  to  welcome  overtures  for 
a  friendly  understanding  with  this  country. 
Rtissia  was  fain  to  realize  that,  whilst  she  had 
been  pouring  out  blood  and  treasure  in  the  Far 
East,  Germany  had  been  steadily  entrenching 
herself  at  Constantinople  as  the  paramount 
power  in  the  Near  East,  and  largely  at  the 
expense  of  Russia  herself.  The  Baghdad 
Railway  was  merely  the  outward  and  visible 
symbol  of  a  German  mainmise  on  Turkey 
which  had  begun  with  the  Kaiser's  sensational 
visit  to  Abdul  Hamid  in  1898,  when  the 
"  Red  Sultan's  "  hands  were  still  dripping  with 
the  blood  of  the  Armenian  massacres.  Whilst 
Grerman  enterprise  was  being  urged  on  to  the 
economic  exploitation  of  Turkey,  German 
political  influence  at  Yildiz  and  the  direct 
control  exercised  over  Tvirkish  military  affairs 
by  German  military  missions  justified  the 
Kaiser  in  boasting  that  every  Turkish  Army 
Corps  was  an  addition  to  the  armed  forces  of 
the  Triple  Alliance.     Russia  had  been  pursuing 


the  shadow  in  the  Far  East,  and  Grermany  had 
filched  away  from  her  the  substance  in  the 
Near  East. 

Hence  the  Anglo-Russian  Agreement  of  1907, 
which,  following  on  the  Anglo-French  Agreement 
of  1904,  resulted  in  the  Triple  Entente.  There 
was,  as  the  Germans  were  themselves  ultimately 
bound  to  admit,  nothing  more  aggressive  in  this 
diplomatic  grouping  than  in  the  Triple  Alliance 
which  Germany  had  initiated,  so  long  as  Ger- 
many was  not  herself  contemplating  aggression. 
None  the  less  Berlin  resented  the  Anglo- 
Russian  Agreement  even  more  bitterly 
than  she  had  resented  the  Anglo -French 
Agreement,  and  again  within  a  year  there 
followed  a  desperate  attempt  to  break  down 
the  Triple  Entente  before  it  had  time  to  con- 
solidate. Austria-Hungary  was  on  this  occasion 
given  the.  leading  part  at  the  outset.  The 
Near  Eastern  crisis  of  1908-9  which  grew  out 
of  the  annexation  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina 
to  the  Hapsburg  dominions  was  in  many 
respects  very  analagous  to  the  crisis  which 
has  resulted  in  the  present  War.  For  it  assumed 
its  most  dangerous  form  when  Russia  pressed 
Vienna  for  compensations  for  the  little  kingdom 
of  Servia.  Russia,  however,  was  not  then  in  a 
position  to  face  Germany  in  her  "  shining 
armour,"     and    a    scarcely- veiled    Ultimatum 


14 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


THE    EMPEROR    FRANCIS   JOSEPH, 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


15 


from  Berlin  won-  another  temporary  triumph 
for  the  Kaiser's  armed  diplomacy.  Neverthe- 
less, in  spite  of  this  outward  success,  the  Kaiser 
had  again  failed  in  his  main  object.  The 
Triple  Entente  survived  this  shock  just  as  the 
Anglo -French  Agreement  had  svirvived  the  first 
German  onslaught  in  Morocco. 

The  Kaiser,  however,  was  not  yet  cured  of  his 
illusions,  and  in  the  French  occupation  of  Fez 
in  1911,  at  a  time  when  Engleuid  weis  passing 
through  a  difficult  domestic  crisis,  he  saw 
another  chance  of  smashing  the  Entente.  The 
dispatch  of  the  Panther  to  Agadir  was  an  even 
more  direct  provocation  to  France  than  had 
been  the  Kaiser's  own  demonstrative  visit  to 
Tangier  in  1905.  It  was  destined  to  still 
more  signal  failure.  Great  Britain's  loyalty  to 
France  again  never  wavered,  nor  did  French 
patience  and  moderation  give  way.  Germany, 
it  is  true,  secured  a  slice  of  French  Colonial 
territory  towards  the  Congo,  but  the  Entente 
remained  intact.  Germany's  main  consolation 
was  a  fresh  outburst  of  Anglophobia,  with  a 
new  Navy  Bill  deUberately  based  upon  tmtrue 
statements  regarding  British  naval  prepara- 
tions "  to  fall  upon  Germany." 

In  this  place  it  is  worth  while  to  summarize 
the  series  of  steps  by  which  the  Emperor 
William  dixring  the  past  15  years  sought  to 
forward  the  growth  of  the  German  Navy. 
His  embarcation  upon  a  world  poUcy  was  neces- 


THE  RUSSIAN    MINISTER    OF    FOREIGN 
AFFAIRS,  M.  SAZONOFF. 


THE  BRITISH  AMBASSADOR  IN  BERLIN, 
SIR  EDWARD  GOSCHEN. 


sarily  accompanied  by  the  development  of  the 
weapon  upon  which  the  realization  of  such  a 
policy  must  depend.  It  was,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  South  African  War  that  en- 
abled the  Emperor  finally  to  suppress 
German  reluctance  to  vinlimited  naval 
expendittire,  and  upon  ground  prepared 
by  an  unparalleled  campaign  of  anti-British 
calumny  to  create  universal  enthusiasm  for 
German  sea  power.  Immediately  after  Presi- 
dent Kruger's  Ultimatum  the  Emperor  de- 
clared : — "  We  are  in  bitter  need  of  a  powerful 
German  navy.  Had  I  not  been  refused  the 
increase  for  which  I  repeatedly  pressed  during 
the  early  years  of  my  reign,  how  different  would 
be  our  position  to-day."  In  1900  the  first 
great  Navy  Bill  was  introduced  with  the 
phrase  : — "  Germany  must  have  a  fleet  of  such 
strength  that  even  for  the  mightiest  naval 
power  a  war  with  her  woiild  involve  such 
risks  as  to  jeopardize  its  own  supremacy." 
Thenceforward  there  was  no  turning  back. 
There  w£is  a  second  Navy  Bill  in  1906,  a  third 
in  1908,  and  a  fourth  in  1912,  and  although  the 
Bill  of  1912 'added  about  15,000  officers  and 
men  there  was  to  have  been  a  further  increase 
of  personnel  in  1914.  Most  of  the  increases  were 
carried  upon  artificial  waves  of  Anglophobia, 
although  explained  with  soft  words.  Most 
strenuous  resistance  was  offered  to  all  sugges- 
tions  or;  proposals   of  disarmament,   and  the 


16 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


THE   EMPEROR    NICHOLAS    H. 


[W.  &■  D.  Downey. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


17 


BELGRADE. 


successive  efforts  of  British  Governments 
to  arrive  at  some  agreement  were  always 
treated  as  hypocrisy.  In  1911,  when  the 
Agadir  crisis  threatened  war,  the  German  naval 
authorities  had  to  admit  they  were  not  ready. 
From  about  1912  they  were  able  to  say  that 
"  Germany  had  a  fleet  of  such  strength  that 
even  for  the  mightiest  naval  power  a  war  with 
her  would  involve  such  risks  as  to  jeopardize 
its  own  supremacy." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  German  naval 
policy  was  throughout  directed  against  England. 
It  was  explained  in  all  sorts  of  ways ;  at  first  as 
aiming  only  at  a  modest  defence  of  German 
trade,  but  it  was  always  essentially  a  challenge 
to  England  in  the  matter  that  was  most  vital  to 
England  and  to  her  alone.  If  England  remained 
in  "  splendid  isolation  "  as  far  as  other  Powers 
were  concerned,  she  could  meet  the  growth  of  a 
great  navy  on  the  other  side  of  the  North  Sea 
only  by  direct  agreement  with  Germany,  at  the 
expense  of  other  Powers  and  of  her  own  Im- 
perial interests,  or  by  war.  One  effect  of 
Germany's  naval  challenge — ^much  to  her  con- 
tinual surprise— was  to  weld  even  more  firmly 
the  fabric  of  the  British  Empire,  and  to 
strengthen  the  ties  between  Great  Britain  and 
the  Dominions  beyond  the  seas.  The  other  main 
effect  was  to  give  England's  friendships  with 
France  and  Russia  a  shape  which,  although 
the  British  Government  maintained  its  freedom 


to  the  very  end,  rendered  naval  and  military 
cooperation  more  and  more  probable.  Up  to 
the  very  end  Germany  could  have  altered  her 
course  if  she  had  wished  to  do  so,  and  England 
remained  free  to  negotiate  for  the  limitation  of 
expenditure  upon  armaments  which  she  earn- 
estly desired.  But  Germany  clung  steadily 
to  her  ambitions.  Twice — in  1905  and  1911 — 
British  Governments  had  to  avert  European 
war  by  plain  intimations  to  Germany  that 
England  wovild  stand  by  France.  In  Novem- 
ber, 1912,  the  position  was  defined  in  an  ex- 
change of  letters  between  Sir  Edward  Grey  and 
the  French  Ambassador  in  London.  Sir 
Edward  Grey  then  wrote  : — 

From  time  to  time  in  recent  years  the  French  and 
British  naval  and  military  experts  have  consulted 
together.  It  has  always  been  ^understood  that  such 
consultation  does  not  restrict  the  freedom  of  either 
Government  to  decide  at  any  future  time  whether  or 
not  to  assist  the  other  by  armed  force.  We  have 
agreed  that  consultation  between  experte  is  not, 
and  ought  not  to  be  regarded  as,  an  engagement  that 
commits  either  Government  to  action  in  a  contingency 
that  has  not  arisen  and  may  never  arise.  The  dispogi-? 
tion,  for  instance,  of  the  French  and  British  Fleets 
respectively  at  the  present  moment  is  not  based  upon 
an  engagement  to  cooperate  in  war. 

You  have,  however,  pointed  out  that,  if  either 
Government  had  grave  reason  to  expect  an  unpro- 
voked attack  by  a  third  Power,  it  might  become  essen- 
tial to  know  whether  it  could  in  that  event  depend 
upon  the  armed  assistance  of  the  other. 

I  agree  that,  if  either  Government  had  grave  reason 
to  expect  an  unprovoked  attack  by  a  third  Power,  or 
something  that  threatened  the  general  peace,  it  should 


18 


TEE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


THE    KING    OF   THE    BELGIANS. 


[W.  &  D.   Dowiuy^ 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


19 


THE  SERVIAN  PRIME  MINISTER, 
M.  PASHITGH. 

immediately  discuss  with  the  other  whether  both 
Governments  should  act  together  to  prevent  aggres- 
sion and  to  preserve  peace,  and,  if  so,  what  measures 
they  would  be  prepared  to  take  in  common.  If  these 
measures  involved  action,  the  plans  of  the  general 
staffs  would  at  once  be  taken  into  consideration  and 
the  Governments  would  then  decide  what  effect  should 
be  given  to  them. 

In  1912  came  the  Turkish  and  Balkan  Wars. 
The  war  between  Italy  and  Turkey  was  by  no 
means  altogether  welcome  to  Germany.  If,  on 
the  one  hand,  it  made  Italy  more  dependent 
upon  her  German  allies,  and  incidentally  created 
a  good  deal  cf  friction  between  Italy  and  France, 
it  was  calculated  to  impair  to  some  extent 
Germany's  position  in  Constantinople,  where 
the  Turks  felt,  not  unnaturally,  surprise  and 
indignation  at  finding  themselves  attacked  by 
one  of  the  members  of  the  Triple  Alliance. 
Far  more  disconcerting,  however,  to  Germany 
were  the  results  of  the  Balkan  Wars,  1912- 1913. 
The  enfeeblement  of  Turkey  and  the  new  par- 
tition of  her  European  provinces  before  Germany 
had  completed  her  exploitation  of  the  Turkish 
Empire,  and  the  aggrandisement  of  Servia  and 
Greece,  which  barred  the  way  to  Salonika 
against  Austria  and  checked  the  growth  of 
Austro -German  preponderance  in  the  Balkan 
Peninsula,  constituted  a  severe,  if  indirect,  blow 
to  the  whole  fabric  of  European  relationships 
which  the  Austro -German  alliance  had  slowly 
and  laboriously  sought  to  build  up.  Incident- 
ally,  the  exacerbation  of  the    always    latent 


jealousy  between  Austria  and  Italy,  barely 
veiled  by  the  outward  appearances  of  coopera- 
tion in  Albania,  vindermined,  to  a  degree  which 
the  ItaUan  declaration  of  neutrality  has  suddenly 
illuminated,  the  foundations  of  the  Triple 
Alliance  in  which  Italy  had  been  for  many  years 
the  prisoner  rather  than  the  partner  of  Austria 
and  Germany. 

During  the  first  Balkan  War  Germany  un- 
questionably regarded  every  defeat  by  Turkey 
as  a  victory  of  the  Slav  forces,  and  as  far  as 
Servia  was  concerned  the  results  of  the  second 
war  were  still  more  unpalatable  to  Germany, 
inasmuch  as  the  failure  of  the  Bulgarian  atteick 
was  a  further  failure  for  the  Austro -German 
diplomacy  which  had  certainly  encouraged  it. 
In  spite  of  the  recapture  of  Adrianople  by  the 
Turks,  Germany  could  no  longer  count  with  the 
same  confidence  on  the  cooperation  in  any 
European  confiict  of  the  large  number  of  Turkish 
army  corps  which  the  Emperor  William  had  been 
accustomed  to  regard  as  additional  army  corps 
of  the  German  Army.  The  rapprochement 
with  England  during  and  after  the  Balkan  Wars, 
out  of  which  German  diplomacy  made  a  good 
deal  of  capital  at  the  time,  was  in  these  circum- 
stances, as  far  as  Germany  was  concerned,  a  com- 
pulsory rapprochement  for  a  purely  temporary 
purpose.  As  soon  as  the  fortunes  of  war  turned 
so  unexpectedly  against  Turkey  it  was  ob- 
viously Gemxany's  interest  to  cooperate  with 


THE    AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN    MINISTER 

OF  FOREIGN  AFFAIRS,  COUNT 

BERCHTOLD. 


Map  of  the  area  of 

The  European  War 


Scale  of  Miles 


P  so  100 


rouiousE  Woflfs.//,^ 


Murciafa 


.0^ 


OCCO 


ALGIERS 

«      •        «      M      n      ■        .  Con»tantiB«* 

A    L     C     E     R     I      A 

^ / C A 


20 


22 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


THE  BRITISH  AMBASSADOR  IN  VIENNA, 
SIR    MAURICE    DE    BUNSEN. 


England  in  arresting  as  rapidly  as  possible  the 
progress  of  hostilities  during  the  first  war,  and 
for  similar  reasons  again  during  the  second  war, 
as  soon  as  the  Bulgarian  effort  was  seen  to  have 
failed.  How  little,  nevertheless,  Grerman  policy 
was  directed  towards  any  permanent  preserva- 
tion of  European  peace  subsequent  events 
abundantly  showed. 

Before  the  end  of  1912  Germany  had  resolved 
upon  enormous  increases  of  the  Army.  It 
was  announced  in  the  spring  of  1913  that  they 
were  to  cost  from  £60,000,000  to  £65,000,000. 
Although  the  peace  strength  of  the  Army  had 
only  a  year  before  been  increased  to  544,000, 
it  was  increased  further  to  661,000,  and  all 
the  most  important  measures  were  treated  as 
"  urgent "  and  carried  out  by  October,  1913, 
In  introducing  the  Army  and  Taxation  Bills 
the  Imperial  Chancellor,  Herr  von  Bethmann- 
HoUweg,    said : — 

One  thing  remains  beyond  doubt — ^if  it  should 
ever  come  to  a  European  conflagration  which  set 
Slaventum  against  GermanerUum,  it  is  then  for  us  a 
disadvantage  that  the  position  in  the  balance  of  forces 
which  was  occupied  hitherto  by  European  Tiu-key 
is  now  filled  in  part  by  Slav  states. 

He  professed  a  perfunctory  behef  in'  the  possi- 
bility of  continued  good  relations  between 
Russia  and  Germany,  but  the  whole  speech 
was  full  of  warnings  and  forebodings,  anu  was 
as  nearly  a  preface  to  the  coming  -conflict  as 
diplomatic  decency  at  the  moment  allowed. 


The  Army  increases  were  Indeed  accompanied 
by  a  number  of  violent  Press  attacks,  now 
upon  Russia,  now  upon  France,  and  occasionally 
upon  both.  England  was  left  as  far  as  possible 
out  of  all  discussions,  and  every  attempt  was 
made  to  accentuate  the  improvement  of  Anglo - 
German  relations,  and  to  make  the  most  of 
so-called  "  negotiations,"  especially  with  regard 
to  the  Portuguese  colonies  in  Africa,  which 
Grermany  believed  to  be  already  in  her  grasp. 
Interrupted  only  by  a  pecviliarly  venomous 
Press  assault  upon  Russia  in  February,  1914, 
matters  drifted  on  vmtil  Jime  28,  1914,  when 
the  Austrian  Heir-apparent,  the  Archduke 
Francis  Ferdinand,  and  his  morganatic  wife, 
the  Duchess  of  Hohenberg,  were  murdered 
in  the  streets  of  Serajevo,  the  capital  of  the 
Bosnian  province  annexed  in  1909.  The  news 
int-errupted  a  British  naval  visit  to  Kiel.  It 
was  a  great  blow  to  the  German  Emperor, 
who  for  some  years  past  had  conquered  his 
personal  antipathy,  and  had  created  intimate 
ties  with  the  Archduke  Francis  Ferdinand, 
whose  policy  as  Emperor  he  hoped  to  guide 
and  to  control.  His  dreams  for  the  next  decade 
were  shattered,  and  the  conflict  with  Russia, 
which  it  was  probably  hoped  to  postpone  a 
httle  longer,  was  brought  nearer.  Germany, 
like  Austria,  chose  immediately  to  assume, 
without  trustworthy  evidence,  that  the  Sera- 
jevo crime  was  the  direct  work  of  Servia.  and 


THE  GERMAN  AMBASSADOR  IN 
ST.  PETERSBURG.  COUNT  POURTALES. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


23 


'^'''IBB^^^^"     *'"*"** '^S^aiiS^^lssfc--^.. 

^_^r^' 

:?•":■....    ,:l---'>J»si^^^^^Hl''                        ■?i5^^5BHM^^tefc-:r- 

;  ■■'%^.  ;"^'  ^ 

r                                          1 

■  f      -       - 

METZ. 


that  Servia  must  be  punished.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  Archduke  Francis  Ferdinand  and 
his  wife,  who  had  insisted  upon  accompanying 
him  upon  his  perilous  toxxr,  were  wantonly 
exposed  to  a  death  for  which  the  true  respon- 
sibility wUl  probably  be  found  to  have  lain  less 
in  Belgrade  than  in  Vienna.  "Under  the 
circumstances,  however,  all  the  Powers  were 
ready  to  give  Austria  any  reasonable  amount 
of  "  satisfaction  "  and  to  justify  any  treatment 
of  Servia  which  did  not  menace  her  existence 
as  a  sovereign  state.  Austria-Hungary,  how- 
ever, was  bent  upon  a  military  punishment  of 
Servia,  and  Austria -Hungary  and  Germany 
together  were  bent  upon  either  a  fresh  humilia- 
tion of  Russia  or  war.  There  was  a  lull  of  nearly 
three  weeks  after  the  Serajevo  crime,  and  then 
there  was  a  further  fortnight  of  diplomacy 
beginning  with  the  presentation  by  Austria 
to  Servia  of  a  monstrous  Ultimatimi,  to  which 
was  attached  a  peremptory  demand  for  an 
entirely  favourable  answer  within  48  hours. 
Within  48  hours  Servia,  acting  upon  Russian 
advice,  accepted  all  the  Austrian  demands 
except  two,  which  she  asked  to  be  reserved  for 
The  Hague  Tribunal.  Austria,  however,  im- 
mediately withdrew  her  Minister  from  Belgrade, 
and  opened  hostilities.  Germany  had  placed 
herself  in  a  situation  of  nominal  detachment 
by  avoiding  direct  knowledge  of  the  contents 
of  the  Avistrian  Note,  and  by  showing  readi- 
ness to  communicate  good  advice  from  London  bo 
Vienna.  As  late  as  July  25,  when  Austria  broke 
off  relations  with  Servia,  the  Russian  Minister 
for    Forei^    Afiairs    "  did    ijot    beUeye    that 


Germany   really    wanted    war."     Europe    was 
soon  undeceived. 

A  Parliamentary  White  Paper  entitled 
"  Correspondence  Respecting  the  European 
Crisis  "  told  with  grim  simplicity  the  grim  story 
of  the  frviitless  efforts  to  maintain  peace.  On 
Jtdy  26  Sir  Edward  Grey  inquired  whether 
Germany,  Italy,  and  France  "  woxild  instruct 
their  representatives  in  London  to  meet  him 
in  conference  immediately  for  the  purpose 
of  discovering  an  issue  which  would  prevent 
complications."  Germany  alone  refused  on 
the  ground  that  "  such  a  conference  was  not 
practicable."  The  German  Foreign  Secretary, 
Herr  von  Jagow,  advanced  many  specious  ob- 
jections, and  "  thought  it  would  be  best " 
(July  27)  to  await  the  outcome  of  an  exchange 
of  views  between  Vienna  and  St.  Petersburg. 
The  very  next  day  Austria  declared  war  against 
Servia,  and  Russia  replied  by  a  partial  mobiliza- 
tion of  her  forces. 

Three  days  before,  the  Russian  Minister  for 
Foreign  Affairs  had  impressed  upon  the  British 
Ambassador  in  St.  Petersbvu-g  the  supreme 
importance  of  England's  attitude.  If  she  took 
her  stand  firmly  with  France  and  Russia  there 
would  be  no  war.  If  she  failed  them  now, 
rivers  of  blood  would  flow  and  she  would  in  the 
end  be  dragged  into  the  war.  Prophetic  words  ! 
Similar  arguments  were  used  by  the  French  and 
then  by  the  Italian  Governments  to  press  Sir 
Edward  Grey  to  throw  the  weight  of  British 
influence  into  the  scale  in  the  only  way  in  which 
they  believed  it  could  effectively  redress  the 
balance    against    the    influences    which    were 


24 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


BISMARCK. 


[Augustin  RischgUi. 


maJdng  for  war  in  Vienna  and  in  Berlin.  But 
the  British  Foreign  Minister  had  to  reckon 
with  public  opinion  in  this  country,  and  to  M. 
Paul  Cambon,  French  Ambassador  in  London 
(July  29),  he  explained  that 

It  approached  the  present  difficulty  from  quite  a 
different  point  of  view  from  that  taken  during  the 
difficulty  as  to  Morocco  a  few  years  ago.  In  the  case 
of  Morocco,  the  dispute  was  one  in  which  France  was 
primarily  interested,  and  in  which  it  appeared  that 
Germany,  in  an  attempt  to  crush  France,  was  fastening 
a  quarrel  on  France  on  a  question  that  was  the  subject 
of  a  special  agreement  between  France  and  us.  In  the 
present  case,  the  dispute  between  Austria  and  Servia 
was  not  one  in  which  we  felt  called  to  take  a  hand. 
Even  if  the  question  became  one  between  Austria  and 
Kussia  we  should  not  feel  called  upon  to  take  a  hand 
in  it.  ...  If  Germany  became  involved  and 
France  became .  involved,  we  had  not  made  up  our 
minds  what  we  should  do  ;  it  was  a  case  that  we 
should  have  to  consider.  France  would  then  have  been 
drawn  into  a  quarrel  which  was  not  hers,  but  in  which, 
owing  to  her  alliance,  her  honour  and  interest  obliged 
her  to  engage.  We  were  free  from  engagements,  and 
we  should  have  to  decide  what  British  interests  re. 
quired  us  to  do. 

Nevertheless — and  the  same  intimation  was 
conveyed  to  the  German  Ambassador — we 
were  taking  all  precautions  with  regard  to  our 
Fleet,  and  Germany  was  not  to  count  on  our 
standing  aside. 

On  the  same  day  that  Sir  Edward  Grey  made 
this  cautious  communication  a  covincil  of  war 
was  held  at  Potsdam  under  the  presidency  of  the 
German  Emperor.  Immediately  after  the 
Coxmcil — ^at    midnight — the    German    Imperial 


Chancellor  sent  for  the  British  Ambassador  in 
Berlin,  Sir  Edward  Goschen,  who  telegraphed 
the  following  account  of  the  Chancellor's  ex- 
traordinary proposals  to  London  : — 

He  said  that  should  Austria  be  attacked  by  Russia 
a  European  conflagration  might,  he  feared,  become 
inevitable,  owing  to  Germany's  obligations  as  Austria's 
ally,  in  spite  of  his  continued  efforts  to  maintain 
peace.  He  then  proceeded  to  make  the  following 
strong  bid  for  British  neutraUty.  He  said  that  it 
was  clear,  so  far  as  he  was  able  to  judge  the  main 
principle  which  governed  British  poUcy,  that  Great 
Britain  would  never  stand  by  and  allow  France 
to  be  crushed  in  any  conflict  there  might  be.  That, 
however,  was  not  the  object  at  which  GeiToany  aimed. 
Provided  that  neutrahty  of  Great  Britain  were 
certain,  every  assurance  would  be  given  to  the 
British  Government  that  the  Imperial  Government 
aimed  at  no  territorial  acquisitions  at  the  expense  of 
France  should  they  prove  victorious  in  any  war 
that  might  ensue. 

I  questioned  his  Excellency  about  the  French 
colonies,  and  he  said  that  he  was  unable  to  give  a 
similar  undertaking  in  that  respect.  As  regards 
Holland,  however,  his  Excellency  said  that,  so  long 
as  Germany's  adversaries  respected  the  integrity  and 
neutrahty  of  the  Netherlands  Germany  was  ready 
to  give  his  Majesty's  Government  an  assm-ance  that 
she  would  do  likewise.  It  depended  upon  the  action 
of  France  what  operations  Germany  might  be  forced 
to  enter  upon  in  Belgium,  but  when  the  war  was  over» 
Belgian  integrity  would  be  respected  if  she  had  not 
sided  against  Germany. 

Sir  Edward  Grey  replied  : — 

His  Majesty's  Government  cannot  for  a  moment 
entertain  the  Chancellor's  proposal  that  they  should 
bind  themselves  to  neutrality  on  such  terms. 

What  he  asks  us  in  effect  is  to  engage  to  stand  by 
while  French  colonies  are  taken  and  France  is  beaten 
so  long  as  Germany  does  not  take  French  territory 
as  distinct  from  the  colonies. 

.  From  the  material  point  of  view  such  a  proposal 
is  unacceptable,  for  France,  without  further  territory 
in  Eiu-ope  being  taken  from  her,  could  be  so  crushed  as 
to  lose  her  position  as  a  Great  Power,  and  become 
subordinate  to  German  policy. 

Altogether,  apart  from  that,  it  would  be  a  disgrace 
for  us  to  make  this  bargain  with  Germany  at  the 
expense  of  France,  a  disgrace  from  which  the  good 
name  of  this  country  would  never  recover. 

The  Chancellor  also  in  effect  asks  us  to  bargain 
away  whatever  obligation  or  interest  we  have  as 
regards  the  neutrahty  of  Belgimn.  We  could  not 
entertain  that  bargain  either. 

In  the  House  of  Commons  on  August  6th 
the  Prime  Minister,  Mr.  Asquith,  branded  the 
Chancellor's  proposal  as  "  infamous,"  and  as 
meaning  that  behind  the  back  of  France  we 
shoTild  give  free  licence  to  Germany  to  annex 
the  whole  of  the  extra-European  dominions 
and  possessions  of  France,  and  as  regarded 
Belgium,  meaning  that  without  her  knowledge 
we  should  barter  away  to  the  Power  that 
was  threatening  her  our  obUgation  to  keep 
our  plighted  word. 

Notwithstanding  the  extent  to  which  German 
diplomacy  had  now  been  unmasked.  Sir  Edward 
Grey  maintained  his  efEorts  to  the  end,  and 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


25 


actually    appended   the   following   passage   to 

his  stinging  reply  to  Gernxany  : — 

If  the  peace  of  Europe  can  be  preserved  and  the 
present  crisis  safely  passed,  my  own  endeavour  will 
be  to  promote  some  arrangement,  to  which  Germany 
could  be  a  party,  by  which  she  could  be  assured  that 
no  aggressive  or  hostile  policy  would  be  pursued 
against  her  or  her  allies  by  Prance,  Russia,  and 
ourselves,  jointly  or  separately.  I  have  desired  this 
and  worked  for  it,  as  far  as  I  could,  through  the  last 
Balkan  crisis,  and,  Germany  having  a  corresponding 
object,  our  relations  sensibly  improved.  The  idea 
has  hitherto  been  too  Utopian  to  foma  the  subject 
of  definite  proposals,  but  if  this  present  crisis,  so 
much  more  acute  than  any  that  Europe  has  gone 
through  for  generations,  be  safely  passed,  I  am 
hopeful  that  the  relief  and  reaction  which  will  follow 
m.iy  make  possible  some  more  definite  rapprochement 
between  the  Powers  than  has  been  possible  hitherto. 

On  July  31,  the  day  on  which  Germany 
dispatched  an  Ultimatum  to  Russia  requiring 
immediat3  demobilization  and  an  inquiry 
to  France  as  to  her  attitude,  Sir  Edward  Grey 
inquired  of  the  French  and  German  Govern- 
ments respectively  whether  they  would  respect 
the  neutrality  of  Belgium  so  long  as  no  other 
Power  violated  it,  France  gave  a  definite 
pledge.     Germany  gave  no  reply. 

On  August  4  Germany  was  informed  that  the 

King  of  the  Belgians  had  made  the  following 

appeal  to  King  George  : — 

Remembering  the  numerous  proofs  of  your  Majesty's 
friendship  and  that  of  your  predecessor,  and  the 
friendly  attitude  of  England  in  1870  and  the  proof 
of  friendship  you  have  just  given  us  again,  I  make 
a  supreme  appeal  to  the  diplomatic  intervention  of 
your  Majesty's  Government  to  safeguard  the  integ- 
rity of  Belgium. 

England  again  demanded  assurances  from 
Germany,  but  German  troops  were  then  already 
in  Belgium.  Luxemburg  had  been  occupied 
by  Germany  some  days  before.  The  Imperial 
Chancellor,  speaking  in  the  Reichstag  which 
had  been  specially  convened,  said : — 

We  are  now  in  a  state  of  necessity,  and  necessity 
knows  no  law !  .  .  .  We  were  compelled  to 
override  the  just  protest  of  the  Luxemburg  and 
Belgian  Governments.  The  wrong — I  speak  openly — 
that  we  are  committing  we  will  endeavoiu*  to  make 
good  as  soon  as  our  military  goal  has  been  reached. 
Anybody  who  is  threatened,  as  we  are  threatened, 
and  is  fighting  for  his  highest  possessions,  can  have 
only  one  thought — how  he  is  to  hack  his  way  through. 

There  was  nothing  left  to  the  British  Govern- 
ment but  to  send  Sir  Edward  Goschen  the 
following  final  instructions,  which  reached 
Berlin  at  7  p.m.  on  August  4  : — 

We  hear  that  Germany  has  addressed  Note  to 
Belgian  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  stating  that 
German  Government  will  be  compelled  to  carry  out, 
if  necessary  by  force  of  arms,  the  measures  con- 
sidered indispensable. 

We  are  also  informed  that  Belgian  territory  has 
been  violated  at  Gemmenich. 

In  these  circiunstances,  and  in  view  of  the  fact 
that  Germany  declined  to  give  the  same  assurance 
respecting  Belgium   as    France    gave    last   week   in 


reply  to  our  request  made  simultaneously  at  Berlin 
and  Paris,  we  must  repeat  that  request,  and  ask 
that  a  satisfactory  reply  to  it  and  to  my  telegram 
of  this  morning  be  received  here  by  12  o'clock  to- 
night. If  not,  you  are  instructed  to  ask  for  your 
passports,  and  to  say  that  his  Majesty's  Govern- 
ment feel  bound  to  take  all  steps  in  their  power  to 
uphold  the  neutrality  of  Belgium  and  the  observance 
of  a  treaty  to  which  Germany  is  as  much  a  party  as 
om^elves. 

Immediately  after  these  instructions  reached 
Berhn  the  German  Government,  without  wait- 
ing for  the  ultimatum  to  expire,  announced  that 
England  had  declared  war.  There  had  been 
disgraceful  scenes  on  the  departure  of  the 
Russian  Ambassador,  M.  Sverbejev,  but  they 
were  as  nothing  in  comparison  with  the  outburst 
of  fury  when  it  was  found  that  the  efforts  to 
keep  England  neutral  had  failed.  There  was  a 
mob  demonstration  at  the  British  Embassy, 
where  windows  were  broken,  many  Englishmen 
were  arrested  as  spies,  and  only  the  vigour  of  the 
American  Embassy,  which  had  undertaken  the 
protection  of  British  interests,  made  the  situa- 
tion— thanks  especially  to  German  eagerness  to 
court  American  feeling — to  some  extent  toler- 
able. As  the  Government  was  unable  for 
obvious  reasons  to  explain  the  facts  about  the 
neutrality  of  Belgium,  for  which  Germany,  as 
Sir  Edward  Grey  pointed  out,  was  as  much 
responsible  as  England  and  the  other  Powers, 
it  encouraged  the  public  to  beUeve  that  England 
had  only  been  waiting  her  opportunity  to  strike 
Germany  when  she  was  already  at  war  on  both 


VON  MOLTKE. 


[Auguslin  Rischgitj, 


26 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


frontiers.  The  world  then  saw  the  bad  side  of 
her  patriotism,  which  was  in  itself  admirable. 
All  who  had  an  opportxinity  of  watching  Ger- 
many during  the  fortnight  of  acute  tension  could 
testify  to  the  patience,  confidence,  and  en- 
thusiasm of  the  people,  although  in  Prussia,  and 
in  most  other  parts  of  the  Empire,  practically 
the  whole  reserves  were  called  upon  at  once, 
absorbing  the  bulk  of  the  able-bodied  p>opulation 
and  bringing  ordinary  hf  e  to  a  standstill.  There 
was  no  sound  of  complaint  or  question  of  a  policy 
which  the  country  did  not  understand,  and 
had  no  opportunity  to  judge.  The  Socialists, 
although  they  in  Grermany  constituted  not  less 
than  one-third  of  the  whole  population,  and 
although  they  had  been  organizing  great  anti- 
war demonstrations,  came  immediately  into 
line.  The  Reichstag  passed  without  considera- 
tion all  the  emergency  BiUs  presented  by 
the  Government,  including  war  credits  of 
£250,000,000,  together  with  the  absorption  of 
the  Empire's  "  war  chest "  of  gold  and  silver 
to  the  amount  of  £15,000,000,  and  the  author- 
ization of  loans  on  all  sorts  of  secvu-ities  to  the 
amoimt  of  £75,000,000.  But,  once  England 
was  involved,  there  appeared  beneath  all 
this  patriotism  and  readiness  to  make  sacri- 
fices   a    deep    and    general    animosity    against 


THE  GERMAN   AMBASSADOR  IN   PARIS, 
BARON  VON  SCHOEN. 


THE  FRENCH  AMBASSADOR  IN  BERLIN, 
M.  JULES  CAMBON. 


England.  It  was  the  fruit  of  the  teaching  of 
the  whole  school  of  German  intellectuals ;  the 
fruit  of  the  many  violent  campaigns  against 
England  with  which  the  German  Government 
had  accompanied  all  its  efforts  for  a  generation, 
and  especially  the  challenge  to  British  naval 
supremacy  ;  and  the  fruit  of  the  overweening 
contempt  which  sprang  from  Germany's 
abnormal  and,  to  a  large  extent,  unnatural 
indtistrial  and  commercial  expansion  in  a 
period  of  only  about  20  years.  Germany  had 
become  incapable  of  seeing  any  but  one  side^ 
the  German  side— of  any  question,  and  although 
her  own  moral  and  intellectual  ideals  heid  been 
submerged  in  an  utter  materialism,  she  was 
unable  to  appreciate  interests  which  did  not 
march  with  her  own — much  less  to  appreciate 
moral  obligations  and  national  sentiments  which 
did  not  smt  the  ambitions  of  Germany.  The 
fault  lay  mainly  with  the  Government  and 
with  the  Emperor,  for  they  had  deceived  the 
German  people  and  led  them  along  paths  which 
ended  only  in  an  impenetrable  wall.  But,  as 
has  been  well  observed,  the  responsibility  must 
rest,  not  only  with  those  who  constructed  an 
impossible  programme,  but  with  all  those — 
and  they  were  the  whole  German  people — who 
would  have  welcomed  its  success. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  ARMY  AND  THE  FORTRESSES 

OF  BELGIUM. 

Belgian-Neutrality  as  a  Political  Abstbaction  and  its  Violation  as  a  Military  Theorem- 
Neutrality  Becomes  a  Focus  of  Patriotism— The  Old  Army  a  Governmental  Army— The 
New  Citizen  Army— The  Creation  of  the  Fortresses— Brialmont— The  Problem  of  Liege 
AND  Namuk— Concrete  and  Cupola— The  Army  in  1863,  1899,  and  1902— The  National 
Army  Acts  of  1909  and  1913— Strength  in  1914— The  Garde  Civique— Organization  of  the 
Army  on  Mobilization— Armament  and  Equipment— Typical  Brialmont  Forts— Lai-eb 
Designs— Antwerp— LifeGE  and  Namur— Cupolas  versus  Modern  Howitzers. 


WHEN  Belgium  was  declared  " per- 
petually neutral  "  it  was  quite  as 
much  in  the  interests  of  the  Great 
Powers  as  in  her  own.  A 
dangerous  crisis  over  the  fate  of  Limburg  had 
just  been  passed,  and  both  France  and  Prussia 
had  formed  the  habit  of  studying  the  invasion 
of  their  respective  countries  by  way  of  Belgium. 
In  nearly  all  Moltke's  memoranda  of  1859- 
1869  on  possible  Franco-German  wars  the 
eventuality  of  a  French  attack  from  Belgium 
was  taken  into  consideration.  Since  1870, 
however,  the  question  had  been  studied  rarther 
from  the  point  of  view  of  German  attack  upon 
France  than  vice  versa,  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
there  was  no  problem  of  higher  strategy  that  had 
been  so  freely  discussed  as  that  of  the  violation 
of  Belgium's  neutrality. 

That  Germany  would  not  be  restrained  by  the 
old  Treaty  of  London  if  it  suited  her  to  attack 
France  by  way  of  Belgium  was  assumed  on  all 
sides  as  the  basis  of  discussion.  Rightly  and 
naturally,  the  soldiers  left  the  question  of  public 
law  and  policy  to  higher  authority,  and  applied 
themselves  to  the  consideration  of  the  military 
conditions  and  consequence?  of  an  act  which 
was   obviously   possible. 

It  must  be  said  that,  after  the  formation  of 
the  Dual  Alliance  and  the  consequent  possi- 
bility of  a  war  on   two    fronts  for  Germany, 


military    opinion    was    by    no    means    agreed, 
either  in  principle  or  in  detail,  on  the  question  of 
Germany's    advantage   in    the    matter.     Some 
held  that  the  time  limit  imposed  upon  Ger- 
many by  Eastern  necessities    was    too     small 
to    allow    of     the    march    through   Belgium. 
Others     considered        that      Germany's     only 
object    would    be    to     pass      troops    through 
Southern      Belgium      only      as      rapidly     as 
possible,  and,  deploying  for  the  first  time  in 
France  itself,   to   pick  up   new  railway   com- 
mxmications  with  Germany    via  M^zieres  and 
Luxemburg — in   other   words,  to   borrow   part 
of     Belgium    for    a    week    or    so,     to     con- 
front  Europe  with  the  fait  accompli,  and   to 
pacify     Belgium     by      prompt      payment     of 
the    bill    for    damages.     Still   others  held  that 
Germany  needed  Belgium,  south  and  north  of 
the  Meuse  alike,  both  for  the  deployment  and 
for  the  subsequent  maintenance  of  her  huge 
forces.     In   all  these  studies,   as   a  matter  of 
course,  estimates  were  formed  of  the  theoretical 
resistance  of  the  Belgian  Army  to  the  invaders. 
One  would  assert  that  mobilization  would  re* 
qviire  such-and-such  a  period,  others  would  cal- 
culate in  terras  of  "neutralizing"  one,  two,  or 
three  German  army  corps,  and  others  imagined 
that  Belgium  would  only  save  her  f  ace,and  worked 
out  their  problem  purely  on  the  distances  and 
times  separating  Aix-Ia-Chapelle  from  Mdzieres. 


27 


28 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


These  frigid  calculations  and  estimates 
usually  ignored  the  fact  that  since  her  inde- 
pendence Belgium  had  developed  a  distinct  and 
remarkable  national  spirit.  Yet  in  some  re- 
spects this  omission  was  natural  enough,  for  it 
was  not  always  that  the  Belgian  authorities 
themselves  realized,  before  the  war,  the  bearing 
of  patriotism — this  new  and  real  patriotism — 
on  their  military  problem.  One  of  the  leading 
Belgian  generals,  for  instance,  defined  the  role 
of  the  Belgian  Army  as  the  detaining  of  such  a 
proportion  of  the  invader's  force  as  would 
weaken  him.  unduly  on  his  main  battlefield. 
On  these  cold  premises,  Belgium  was  not  a 
neutral  nation  at  all,  but  simply  a  State  possess- 
ing a  certain  nimxber  of  soldiers  who  could 
be  thrown  into  the  scale  on  this  side  or  that,  if 
her  treaty  rights  were  infringed.  In  fact,  in 
the  eyes  of  the  Army,  neutrahty  had  become,  in 
a  sense,  a  badge  of  servitude. 

Far  different  were  the  realities  of  the  case. 
When  Belgivim  faced  the  Germans  in  August, 
1914,  in  defence  of  her  neutrality,  that  privilege 
stood  for  nothing  less,  in  the  eyes  of  the  people, 
than  national  independence.  It  was  not  a 
question  of  telling  the  Army  to  act  as  a  make- 
weight, but  a  question  of  fighting  the  Germans 
to  the  bitter  end.  Belgian  patriotism,  fre- 
quently supposed  to  have  been  smothered  in 
infancy  by  sectional,  pohtical,  and  industrial 
quarrels,  was  suddenly  put  to  the  supreme  test 
and  proved  its  existence. 

At  that  moment  the  Regular  Army  had  only 
recently  come  to  be  representative  of  that 
patriotism — to  be  an  army,  so  to  speak,  of 
"principals."  Up  to  1913,  or  at  least 
up  to  1909,  it  had  been  conceived  of 
rather  as  an  army  of  "  agents."  The  com- 
munity itself  had  been  too  conxpletely  absorbed 
in  its  industrial  development  and  its  social 
questions  to  pay  much  heed  to  those  of  defence. 
It  paid,  and  willingly  paid,  for  its  costly  fortifica- 
tions, just  as  the  British  public  paid  for  its 
Navj'^.  Bxit  its  personal  living  connexion  with 
the  Army  was  small.  The  Government,  on  its 
part,  was  certainly  somewhat  unwilUng  to 
suixender  to  the  principle  of  the  armed  nation, 
conceiving  that  it  needed  a  force  of  agents  of  its 
own  to  support  its  authority  in  time  of  internal 
trouble. 

At  the  time  when  the  Belgian  Army  took 
shape,  practically  all  the  armies  of  Europe  were 
organized  on  the  principle  of  substitute-con- 
scription. This  principle  produced,  in  prac- 
tice, armies  that  were  chiefly  composed  of 
volunteer  professionals,  since,  on  the  one  hand, 
the  substitute  who  served  on  behalf  of  a  con- 
script was  really  a  volunteer  with  a  bounty. 


and  on  the  other,  the  re-engagement  of  the 
time-expired  substitute  to  serve  for  a  second 
conscript  gave  the  State  a  long-service  army 
that  it  could  fairly  regard  as  its  own  pro- 
perty. Until  after  1871,  therefore,  this  form 
of  army  was  as  normal  and  nattiral  as  an 
army  of  soldiers  of  fortune  in  the  17  th  centvu-y 
or  a  mechanical  army  in  the  18th  century. 

After  1871,  however,  the  military  problem 
of  Belgimn  was  by  no  means  so  simple.  The 
most  formidable  military  Power  of  Europe 
was  to  the  east,  and  the  second  most  formidable 
to  the  west,  of  her.  At  the  same  time,  in 
Belgium  itself  both  the  popular  view  of  the 
Army  as  a  thing  apart  and  the  governmental 
objections  to  the  arming  of  a  people  not  easily 
governed  stUl  held  good.  Whereas  in  the  case  of 
the  new  French  Army  the  new  organization  was  a 
recombination  of  free  atoms  into  wkich  the 
war  had  disintegrated  it,  Belgium  had  under 
gone  no  such  process  of  disintegration,  and  the 
reforms  in  her  Army  after  the  precautionary 
mobilization  of  that  year  were  rather  adjust- 
ments than  reconstructions.  In  fact,  for 
more  than  30  years  the  Army  remained,  in 
kind  and  type,  the  same. 

Belgium's  answer  to  the  new  conditions 
created  by  1870  was  fortification.  It  so  hap- 
pened that  she  possessed  ia  General  Brialmont 
the  greatest  military  engineer  of  the  19th  cen- 
tury, and  his  genius  and  activity  dominated 
the  scheme  of  defence.  As  a  young  officer 
in  the  days  of  smooth-bore  guns,  he  was,  like 
his  French  contemporaries,  a  disciple  of  the 
orthodox  "  bastion "  school  of  fortification, 
but  presently  he  went  over  to  the  "  poly- 
gonal "  side  of  Camot,  Montalembert,  and 
the  Prussians.  The  enceinte  of  Antwerp, 
built  to  his  designs  in  1859,  with  its  chicanes 
of  all  sorts — little  rises  of  the  parapet  level 
to  give  fire  upon  this  or  that  corner,  httle  falls 
and  recesses  to  protect  it  from  enfilade,  in- 
geniously-ciirved  short  flanks  to  search  shy 
comers  of  the  ditch,  and  so  on — still  exists 
to  attest  his  skill  and  ingenuity  in  a  lost  cause. 
But  with  1864  and  1870  came  the  rifled  gun, 
and  Brialmont  was  young  enough  to  adapt  his 
works  to  the  new  standard  of  resistance. 

For  some  years  after  1870  the  question  of 
the  Army  had  precedence  over  the  question 
of  the  forts.  Strong  and  determined  efforts 
were  being  made  by  the  army  officors  (Brial- 
mont amongst  them)  and  the  democrats, 
approaching  the  problem  from  widely  different 
sides,  to  introduce  the  principle  of  the  nation 
in  arms,  and  it  was  with  the  arriere  pensee  of 
diverting  attention  from  this  side  of  the  defence 
question    that    the  Government    took    up    the 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


29 


LIEGE. 


fortification  proposals  of  Colonel  Deboer,  Brial- 
mont's  right-hand  man. 

It  was  already  provided  in  the  defence  scheme 
of  1859  that  Antwerp  should  be  the  main  strong- 
hold of  the  kingdom,  upon  which  all  field  opera- 
tions— whether  against  French  or  against 
German  intruders — should  be  based.  Deboer, 
supported  by  his  chief,  proposed  some  barrier- 
forts  (not,  be  it  observed,  a  ring  of 
forts)  at  Liege  in  1879.  Tliree  years 
later  Brialmont  himself  proposed  more  im- 
portant works,  both  at  Liege  and  at 
Namiir,  and  with  these  proposals  began  three 
fresh  sets  of  controversies.  These  were,  first, 
the  pohtical  disputes  which  made  the  expendi- 
ture of  money  on  those  new  works  a  party 
question ;  secondly,  the  strategical  question 
whether  Namur  and  Liege  should  be  made 
into  important  fortresses,  a  proposition  to 
which  many  senior  officers  of  the  Belgian  Army 
would  not  assent ;  and,  thirdly,  the  technical 
military  question  of  armour  and  concrete 
versus  earth  parapets,  which  was  then  at  its 
height  in  all  countries.* 

Echoes  of  this  last  still  lingered  thirty  years 
afterwards,  when  war  put  the  Meuse  fortresses 
to  the  test.  The  first  was  set  at  rest  when, 
under  the  spell  of  Brialmont' s  personality, 
the  Government  decided  to  make  Liege  and 
Namur  fortresses  after  his  own  heart.  The 
second,  or  strategical,  issue  was  fought  and 
re-fought  throughout  the  years   of   peace,    the 


most  serious  competing  proposal  being  that  of 
General  Dejardin,  who  urged  his  countrymen 
to  give  up  the  too  exposed  Meuse  line  and  to 
make  Brussels  itself  a  first-class  fortress  con- 
nected with  Antwerp  by  barrier -forts  on  the 
Dyle  and  Scheldt. 

The  forts  as  actually  constructed  were  of  Brial- 
mont's  third  period — strong  simple  masses  of 
steel  and  concrete  without  chicanes  or  weak- 
nesses, but  of  course  very  expensive.  The  course 
of  operations  in  1914  may  be  said  on  the  whole 
to  have  justified  the  money  sunk  in  these  passive 
defences.  What  is  more  questionable,  how- 
ever, is  their  service  to  the  general  defence  of 
Belgium.  For  beyond  doubt  Belgians  were 
content  to  point  with  pride  to  these  superb 
structtires,  the  finest  miHtary  engineering  work 
of  the  age,*  as  British  people  were  wont  to 
enumerate  the  ships  of  their  great  Navy  instead 
of  tackling  the  problem  of  the  personnel. 

la.  1863,  on  the  eve  of  Prussia's  challenge  to 
the  old  armies  of  Austria  and  France,  Belgivun 
possessed  a  substitute -conscript  "  standing 
army"  of  73,718  rank  and  file,  which  was 
raised  as  far  as  possible  by  voluntary  enUst- 
ment,  the  ballot  (with  liubstitution)  making 
good  vacancies,  as  in  other  armies.  The  term 
of  service  for  all  alike  was  eight  years,  of  which 
foiir  were  spent  "  on  fmiough,"  and  thus 
roughly  38,000  men  were  permanently  under 
arms,  with  a  drilled  reserve  of  36,000  behind 
them.f  The  eleven  fortresses  that  then  existed 


♦Major  G.  S.  Clarke  (afterwards  Lord  Sydenham)  and  Major 
Louis  Jackson  (afterwards  Assistant  Director  of  Fortlflcations) 
were  amongst  those  who  broke  a  lance  with  General  Brialmont 


•Though  rivalled  perhaps  by  the  same  engineer's  Bucharest 
works  in  Sumania. 

tThere  was  also  a  small  naval  force.  To-day  the  only  Gtovem- 
ment  vessels  are  fast  Channel  steamers. 


V 


!30 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


GENERAL    LEMAN. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


*6l 


tjOLLAND 


PLAN    OF    THE    LIEGE    FORTRESSES. 


absorbed  practically  the  whole  of  this  force. 
At  that  time  the  population  was  jiist  under 
5,000,000  souls. 

In  1899,  in  a  population  of  about  6,750,000, 
the  peace  strength  was  still  only  43,000  rank  and 
file,  and  substitution  was  still  the  ruling  principle. 
But  the  Army  had  ceased  to  be  the  almost 
piirely  professional  force  that  it  had  been, 
for  enough  non-substitute  militiamen  had  been 
passed  through  the  ranks  into  the  reserve  to 
give  a  total  war  strength  (in  the  ten  year -classes* 
liable)  of  about  130,000.  On  the  other  hand, 
Namur  and  Liege  had,  rightly  or  wrongly,  been 
raised  from  the  status  of  jorts  d'arret  to  that 
of  fortresses,  and  their  garrisons  had  been 
correspondingly  enlarged,  so  that  it  was  doubt- 
ful whether  even  as  many  as  80,000  men  would 
be  available  for  the  free  field  army. 

It  was  this  last  fact  which  more  than  any 
'  other  consideration  led  to  the  passing  of  the 

♦Legally  only  eight  were  available,  but  the  Gcovemment  had 
■  emergency  powers  to  call  up  two  more. 


Army  Law. of  1902.  This  Law  certainly  marked 
no  progress  towards  the  realization  of  a 
national  militia.  On  the  contrary,  it  made 
voluntary  enlistment  of  professionals  the 
acknowledged  basis  of  the  Army  by  in- 
creasing their  emoluments  and  practically 
doubling  the  proportion  of  them  on  the  peace 
establishment.  But  two  reforms  of  great  import- 
ance were  effected.  First,  the  liability  period 
was  extended  to  thirteen  years,  and,  secondly, 
the  framework  of  the  Army  was  recast  so  as 
to  give  many  cadres  on  a  low  peace  establish- 
ment, to  be  filled  on  mobilization  by  the  reser- 
vists, of  whom  thirteen-year  classes  were  now 
available  instead  of  eight  or  ten.  Thanks  to  these 
two  reforms,  it  was  expected  that  on  mobiliza- 
tion 180,000  men  would  be  available  in  organ 
ized  formations.  Under  this  Law  the  strength 
of  the  eventual  field  army — ^after  garrisons  had 
been  provided  for — was  supposed  to  be  100,000. 
In  a  few  years,  however,  it  became  evident 
that   the    system    of    relying   upon   increased 


32- 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


BELGIAN    SOLDIERS    AT    BRUSSELS. 


CIVIL  GUARDS  AT  ANTWERP. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


33 


voluntary  enlistmrent  was  a  failvire.  The 
deficit  was  not  indeed  very  alarming  in  itself, 
considered  in  relation  either  to  the  peace 
strength  or  to  the  viltimate  mobilizable  force, 
but  it  did  indicate  that  no  farther  expansion 
was  possible  on  the  old  lines  of  a  governmental 
army.  The  reason  for  this  was  certainly  not 
want  of  patriotism  in  the  Belgian  people,  for 
national  military  service  was  in  the  creed  of 
the  most  democratic  political  parties,  as  it 
had  been  in  the  creed  of  the  old  Radicals  of 
the  1848  Revolutions.  It  was  due  partly  to 
the  fact  that  the  Army  was  being  kept  away 
from  the  people  by  the  Government,  and  still 
more  to  the  absorption  of  the  unemployed  in 
the  growing  industries  at  home  and  of  the 
most  adventurous  in  the  service  of  the  Congo.* 

Meanwhile  the  international  outlook  grew 
darker.  The  Russo-Japanese  war,  the  first 
Morocco  dispute,  and  the  Austrian  annexation 
of  Bosnia  followed  one  another  swiftly. 
Every  other  year  at  least  there  was  a  threat 
of  general  Eiiropean  war.  Every  year  witnessed 
some  development  in  mobile  siege  artillery  that 
was  supposed  to  increase  the  military  chances 
of  a  Tjrusque  attack  on  Brialmont's  Meuse 
fortresses,  hitherto  supposed  to  be  reducible 
only  by  sapping  and  mining.  It  was  now  not 
the  fortresses,  but  the  Army,  that  took  first 
place  in  the  scheme  of  national  defence.  There 
were  moments  in  the  years  1909-1914  when 
Liege  and  Namur  could  fairly  have  been  said 
to  be  suffering  from  neglect — a  thing  that 
would  have  been  inconceivable  ten  years  before. 
Antwerp,  on  the  other  hand,  restmied  the  place 
that  it  had  held  in  the  defence  scheme  of  1859. 
While  Liege  and  Namur  began  to  be  looked 
upon  again  as  simple  barrier-groups,  Antwerp, 
in  its  capacity  as  base  of  the  field  army,  received 
an  enormous  outer  ring  of  new  forts,  more 
modern  in  conception  even  than  Brialmont's. f 

Almost  the  last  act  of  King  Leopold  II.  was 
to  give  the  Royal  assent  to  the  Army  Bill  of 
1909.  In  that  Bill  substitution  and  the 
governmental  army  that  it  produced  at  last 
definitely  gave  way  to  the  principle  of  the 
national  army.  The  ^new  gcheme  was  in  many 
respects  tentative  and  imperfect,  and  in  fact 
had  to  be  thoroughly  revised  in  1913.  But  the 
first  and  hardest  step  was  taken.  The  nation 
was  armed,  and  neutrality  as  a  politico -miUtary 
abstraction  rapidly  gave  way  to  "  independ- 
ence "  as  a  popular  creed. 

By  hmiting  substitution  to  the  one  case  of 
brothers  the  character  of  the  Army  was  changed 

•Moreover,  the  drilled  volunteer  battalions  of  the  Civic  Guard 
(see  below)  doubtless  absorbed  some  promising  material. 

t  These  forts  were  completed'  and  fit  to  stand  a  siege,  acooiding 
to  published  German  reports,  in  November,  1913, 


COUNT  DE  LALAING, 
the  Belgian  Minister  in  London. 

[Bassanu. 

from  that  of  a  contract  force  rendering  services 
professionally  to  that  of  a  duty  force  serving  as 
members     of     society.     The     peace     strength 
(42,800)  remained  at  much  the  same  figure  as 
before,  as  also  did  the  periods  of  colour  service 
required  of  the  militiamen.     But  the  absence 
of  a  high  proportion  of  long-service  men  enabled 
the  annual  intake  of  recruits — which  is  what 
determines  the  war  strength  of  an  army — to  be 
increased   from    a   nominal    13,000    to    a   real 
17,500.     The  low-establishment  cadres   of   the 
previous    organization    were  thus  filled  up  to 
the  ordinary  standard  of  active  units  in  peace. 
At  the  same  time  the  liability  period  was  re- 
duced by  one  year,  so  that  a  war  strength  of 
210,000  rank  and  file  could  be   obtained   with 
certainty  so  long  as  the  volontaires   de   carriers 
— i.e.,  the  enlisted  professionals — still  remained 
in   the  Army  in  great    numbers.     Given     this 
standard    of    strength,     it     was    clearly    un- 
necessary to  apply  the  principle  of  imiversal 
service  rigorously  throughout  a  population  of 
over     7,000,000.*     Accordingly,     Uability    was 
restricted  to  one  son   in  each  family,  and,  as 
above   mentioned,  one   brother   cotild   join   aa 
substitute  for  another. 

But  the  question  was  soon  asked — ^Was  this 
war  strength  itself  adequate  ?  Having  regard 
to  the  immense  development  of  the  new  en- 
trenched camp  of  Antwerp,  not  less  than  130,000 

*The  maximum  amiual  contingent  on  such  a  population  would 
have  been  about  67.000,  of  whom  some  33,000  or  34.000  woi|J(J 
be  fit  for  service. 


34 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


of  the  210,000  would  be  required  for  fortress 
duties,  and  the  field  army,  instead  of  being 
increased,  would  remain  stationary  at  the 
figure  of  80,000.* 

The  second  Morocco  crisis  of  1911,  and  the 
Itahan  and  Balkan  wars  of  1 9 1 1  - 1 2,  with  the  con- 
sequent increases  in  the  strength  and  war-readi- 
ness of  the  French  and  German  Armies,  answered 
the  question  promptly  and  decisively  ;  and  in 
January,  1913,  a  new  Army  scheme  was  brought 
forward  by  the  Government.  It  became  law 
in  due  course  and  had  been  about  a  year  and 
a  half  in  operation  when  the  Great  War  broke 
out. 

Under  this  scheme  the  standard  of  strength  on 
mobilization  was  to  be  a-s  follows  (rank  and  file 
only)  :— 

Field  army 150,000 

Antwerp  ..  ..  „.      90,000 

Liege 22,500 

Namiir  17,500 

Reserves  in  depots  (for  drafts)      60,000 


340,000 


To  realize  this  standard,  liability  to  service 
was  made  in  fact,  as  it  already  was  in  theory, 
universal.  But  certain  exemptions  were,  as 
usual,  granted,  and  allowing  for  these  and  for  the 
physically  imfit  it  was  calculated  that  no  more 
than  49  per  cent,  of  the  gross  annual  contingent 
would  be  available  for  service.  The  thirteen 
years'  term  of  liability  to  serve  on  mobilization 
was  reintroduced.  Had  events  permitted  the 
scheme  to  grow  to  maturity,  the  above  mmibers 
wovdd  have  been  realized  with  certainty,  since 
thirteen  classes  each  of  33,000  compvilsory 
service  men  and  2,000  volunteers  would  have 
given  a  total  of  455,000.  As  it  was,  how- 
ever, only  two  classes  had  become  available 
under  the  new  scheme,  and  the  resources  of  the 
country  in  trained  men  (not  counting  the  Civic 
Guard)  were,  roughly  : — 

The  1913  class  . .  . ,      30,000 

Four    classes    (1909-12),    at 

20,000  80,000 

Eight     classes     (1901-8),     at 

13,300  106,400 

Volunteers  (steadily  decreas- 
ing from  1901,  but  averaged 
at  about  2,500)       ..  ..      34,600 


251,000 
Plus  the  recruit  class  of  1914  33,000 
Plus  professional  cadres      . .       12,000 

Gross     ..  ..    296,000 


•  This  fteure.  however,  would  now  be  a  minimum  and  not  a  maxi- 
mum, as  It  would  have  proved  m  a  mobilization  under  the  1902 


Deduct  15  per  cent,  as  unfit 
and  missing  on  mobilization, 
and  the  net  strength  be- 
comes   261,000 

Add  gendarmerie  not  included 

in  the  classes  above,  about        2,000 

Total  available  ..    263,000 

If  therefore,  as  foreseen,  Antwerp,  Namur,  and 
Liege  were  to  absorb  130,000  men  of  the  active 
army  and  its  reserves,  only  133,000  at  the 
outside  would  be  available  for  the  field  army, 
even  assuming  that  the  new  recruits  of  the -191 4 
contingent  could  by  judicious  distribution  be 
safely  incorporated  in  the  active  ranks,  and  the 
hoped-for  drafting  reserve  of  60,000  men  at  the 
depots  would  be  non-existent.  If,  therefore,  the 
war  establishment  of  the  field  army  (150,000)  was 
to  be  attained,  it  was  necessary  to  economize  on 
the  fortress  garrisons,  and  to  that  end  to  call 
upon  the  Civic  Guard  to  bear  a  greater  share 
in  the  defence  than  had  been  contemplated. 

This  call  was  the  final  test  of  the  reality  of 
Belgian  patriotism. 

The  Garde  Civique  was  one  of  the  few  sur- 
vivors of  the  National  Guards  of  the  days  when 
the  citizen-in-arms  stood  for  liberty  against 
Governmental  autocracy ;  in  its  virtues  and  its 
defects,  therefore,  it  was  the  true  descendant 
of  the  citizen  bands  who  had  risen  against 
the  Dutch  in  the  War  of  Independence,  and 
of  the  National  Guards  that  in  France, 
Germany,  and  Italy  played  so  great  a  part  in 
the  revolutionary  movements  of  1830-48. 
As  with  all  formations  of  this  kind,  its  military 
efficacy  was  in  proportion  simply  to  its  passion. 
That  it  could  not  give  full  effect  to  its  passion 
for  want  of  specifically  military  training  may 
freely  be  admitted — the  point  is  that  all  the 
value  that  it  possessed  was  derived  from  the 
cause  in  which  it  was  called  upon  to  fight. 

On  any  conception  of  Belgian  defence  as 
a  Governmental  act,  therefore,  little  reliance 
was  or  could  be  placed  upon  the  Garde  Civique ; 
and,  moreover,  by  its  very  nature  it  was  rather 
a  covmterpoise  than  an  auxiliary  to  the  Army, 
which,  both  as  a  regular  force  ajid  a  Govern- 
mental force,  looked  down  upon  the  bourgeois 
amateur.  But,  as  we  have  seen,  the  con- 
ception of  neutrality  as  an  affair  of  policy 
involving  the  use  of  an  army  as  the  agent  of 
policy  had  given  way  to  the  conception  of  a 
national  independence  defended  by  the  stout 
hearts  of  the  citizens  themselves.  In  making  this 
new  patriotism  possible  the  Garde  Civique  had 
worthily  played  its  part,  as  it  had  done  also 
in  assisting  to  maintain  public  order  dvflring 
industrial  disputes.     With  the  bringing  together 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


35 


of  the  Army  and  -  the  nation  that  followed 
the  Army  Acts  of  1909  and  1913,  its  part 
seemed  to  be  over,  and  gradually,  as  the 
Army  absorbed  the  citizens,  it  was  intended 
to  die  out. 

But  in  August,  1914,  this  absorption  had 
no  more  than  begun,  and  the  Garde  Civique 
still  existed  in  the  old  form  and  the  old  numbers. 
To  it  belonged  in  theory  every  able-bodied 
man  who  was  not  in  the  line  or  the  reserve 
of  the  regular  forces,  between  the  ages  of 
twenty-one  and  thirty-two  ;  and  behind  it 
was  its  reserve  of  men  of  thirty-th'ee  to  fifty, 
whose  sole  peace  liability  was  to  report  them- 
selves three  times  a  year.  Taking  35,000  as  the 
total  able-bodied  contingent,  and  deducting 
15,000  as  enrolled  in  the  Army,  we  find 
the  nominal  strength  of  the  1st  Ban 
Garde  Civique  to  be  13x20,000,  or  260,000. 
Actually  it  was  far  below  that  figure,  for  only 
in  the  cities  and  towns  did  it  possess  any  effec- 
tive organization,  and  it  may  be  assumed  that 
not  more  than  90,000  Gardes  Civiques  were 
available  for  duty.  These  men  had  been 
present  at  ten  drills  a  year,  but  (as  was  to  be 
expected  from  their  origin  and  principle) 
they  were  under  the  Home  and  not  the  War 
Department,  and  received  little  if  any  assistance, 
either  in  training  or  in  organization,  from  the 
active  army.  However,  in  modem  Belgimn, 
as  in  the  France  of  Louis  Philippe,  the  exist- 
ence of  the  general  liability  had  given  the 
enthiisiasts  the  opportunity  of  forming  voltm- 
teer  corps,  and  these  like  the  British  Volunteers, 
met  habitually  for  drill   and   social  purposes. 


and,  with  little  direct  assistance  from  above, 
attained  a  fair  standard  of  military  efficiency. 
This  category  included  between  37,000  and 
40,000  of  the  90,000  men  in  the  organized 
force.  How  well  these  men  did  their  duty  by 
the  side  of  the  regulars  the  defence  of  Liege 
attests.  If  as  a  national  guard  they  were  mori- 
btind,  as  part  of  the  new  National  Army  that  had 
not  had  time  to  grow,  they  bore  their  full  share 
of  the  defence  of  the  kingdom,  and  this  in  spite 
of  the  brutality  of  the  invaders,  who  chose  to 
regard  them  as  non-military  irregulars,  to  be 
shot  when  caught — a  view  which  might  equally 
well  be  taken  of  the  police  of  Great  Britain,  or 
even  of  the  King's  African  regiments  under  the 
Colonial  Office.  For  a  moment,  when  over- 
whelmed and  unsupported  by  the  Allies,  the 
Belgian  Government  dismissed  the  Civic  Guard, 
in  order  to  save  it  from  this  treatment,  but  it 
was  soon  re-armed  and  re-employed. 

The  aid  of  the  Garde  Civique,  then,  being 
justly  reckoned  upon  for  the  fortresses,  it  was 
possible  on  mobilization  to  constitute  the  field 
array  more  or  less  in  accordance  with  the 
normal  scheme. 

This  provided  for  six  divisions  and  a  cavalry 
division,  besides  the  regular  fortress  troops. 
The  division  consisted  of  staff  and  three  "  mixed 
brigades  "  ;  each  was  composed  of  two  three- 
battalion  regiments  of  infantry  and  a  group  of 
three  four-gun  field  batteries,  plus  the  divisional 
artillery  (three  groups),  divisional  cavalry  (one 
regiment)  and  special  troops. 

The  order  of  battle  of  the  division  is  shown 
in  the  accompanying  diagram  : — 


Bdff. 

Bde. 

Bde. 

Pegt. 

Regt.  with 
Machine  Guns 
□  □□1 

Regt. 
□  □□ 

.  Regt.  with 
Machine  Guns 
□  □□I 

Regt. 
t=l  □  □ 

Regt  with 
Machine.  Guns 

Field  ijl     l[l     ^Batteries 

Field  iJi     l[l     i|l  Batteries 

Field  Ijl     ijl     ijj  Batteries 

t 

Dii^.  Troops 

Field  ijj     ijj     \\  Batteries 

fill     ill     ^V\ 
HowitzerX  -^     t      1  \B3tteries 

• 

^  ^  CZ]  CZ]  Regt. 

la  Engineers 

f>^  Flying  Corps 

rrpi  Supply  and 
L^SI  Transport 

1  4-  j  Med.  Det* 

I 


DIVISION. 


36 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


,,.'>^^ 


Wire 
Cptinglimtnt 


,     Wire 
Cfitanglement 


it/re  Entanglement 


'tVi're  Entanglement 


PENTAGONAL    BRIALMONT    FORT. 


TRIANGULAR   BRIALMONT    FORT. 

(For  description  see  pages  16  &  17.) 


A  very  interesting  feature  of  this  organization, 
which  is  almost  peculiar  to  the  Belgian  Army,  is 
the  mixed  brigade  of  six  battalions  and  three 
batteries.  Such  an  organization,  when  found 
in  other  armies,  is  usually  only  for  detach- 
ments stationed  in  outlying  frontier  districts 
{e.g.,  the  Austro-Montenegrin  and  the  Franco- 
Italian  frontiers).  In  Belgium,  on  the  contrary, 
it  was  not  detachments,  but  the  parts  of  the 
main  army  itself  that  were  so  organized. 
The  needs  of  modern  tactics  had  produced 
the  idea  of  the  "  tactical  group  "  of  all  arms 
within  the  division  in  the  French  and  the 
British  Armies,  but  in  these  armies  the  grouping 
was  only  a  temporary  ad  hoc  arrangement, 
whereas  in  Belgium  it  was  the  basis  of  the 
regular  organization. 

The  cavalry  division  consisted  of  three 
brigades,  each  of  two  four-squadron  regiments, 
a  mobilized  gendarmerie  regiment  in  addition, 
and  three  batteries  of  horse  artillery ;  a  cyclist 
battahon,  a  cj'clist  engineer  detachment  on 
bicycles  and  a  motor-ambulance  section  also 
figured  in  the  organization. 

The  establishment-strength  of  the  division 
was  roughly  22,000  combatants,  which  meant 


that  the  so-called  division  was  in  reality  a 
small  army  corps.  The  cavalry  division  was 
about  5,000  strong  in  combatants. 

This  force  of  six  divisions,*  a  cavalry 
di\Tsion,t  with  the  13th  and  14th  mobile 
brigades  at  Namur  and  Liege,  was  formed 
on  mobilization  hy  the  expansion  of  each  of 
the  20  infantry  regiments  of  three  battalions, 
or  about  1,650  men,  into  a  six -battalion  brigade 
of  about  7,000.  This  meant  a  four-fold  expan- 
sion for  the  regular  field  army  alone,  without 
counting  the  fortress  garrisons,  but  the  Balkan 
Wars  had  already  shown  that  for  a  thoroughly 
national  war  it  was  safe  to  multiply  even  by 
eight.  The  lieutenant-colonels  and  the  second 
captains  of  the  active  regiments,  with  a  propor- 
tion of  junior  officers  serving  as  supernumeraries 
in  peace,  commanded  the  regiment  and  com- 
panies newly  formed  on  mobilization.  J 

The  cavalry  and  artillery  were  maintained  on  a 
high  establishment  in  peace,  the  field  artillery 
being  only  doubled    and  the  cavalry  scarcely 

*lst  Ghent,  2nd  Antwerp.  3rd  Li6ge.  4th'';Namur.  5th  Mons. 
6th  Biussels.  Instead  of  the  two  howitzer  groups  of  divisional 
artillery,  the  6th  dlTisioa  had  one  of  horse  artillery  and  one  of 
heavy  howitzers. 

t  Brussels. 

tThe  regiments  at  Namur  and  LiSge  formed  fortress  battalions 
in  addition. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


37 


UTCH  \ 


REFERENCE. 
-y^Forti 
y    Batteries  &  Redoubts 


^     ^^j.         JU^onings 


Scale  oF  Miles  . 

0        /         2       3        4         9 

'        '        '        '        '      — 


520 


THE    MODERN    DEFENCES    OF   ANTWERP. 


increased  at  all,  by  the  intake  of  reservists 
(men  and  horses)  on  mobihzation.  * 

Of  the  fortress  troops,  both  artillery  and 
engineer,  details  need  not  be  given.  It  will 
suffice  to  say  that  the  formations  in  these 
branches  were  numerous,  as  one  would  expect 
from  the  preponderant  part  played  by  the 
three  fortresses  in  the  defence  scheme. 

Before  we  deal  with  these  fortresses  in  any  de- 
tail, however,  we  may  set  forth  briefly  the  char- 
acteristic points  of  the  armament,  equipment, 
and  uniform  of  the  Belgian  Army.  The  field 
artillery   weapon   was   a   Krupp   qmck-firer   of 

*The  periods  of  militiamen's  Bervioe  with  the  colours  were : — 
Infantry,  Heavy  Artillery,  and  Pioneers,  15  morths;  Cavalry  and 
Horse  Artillery,  24  months ;  Field  Artillery  and  Train,  21  months. 


1905,*  with  single  long  running-up  spring 
and  panorama  sight,  but  without  "  indepen- 
dent line  of  sight  " — in  a  word,  a  typical  equip- 
ment of  its  date,  inferior  to  the  French,  Russian, 
and  British  models,  but  superior  to  the  German. 
At  the  outbreak  of  war  no  definite  decision  had 
been  made  as  to  the  pattern  of  quick-firing  field 
howitzer  to  be  adopted,  and  the  old  breech- 
loading  weapons  were  taken  into  the  field. 
The  rifle,  pattern  1889,  a  Mauser,  of  -301  in. 
calibre,  was  also  a  typical  weapon,  differing 
only  in  points  of  detail  from  the  rifle  of  many 
other  armies. 


*  Some  of  the  guns  were  made  at  Essen,   and  others  at  the 
ordnance  works  of  Cockerill.  at  Seraing.  Li^ge. 


38 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


NAMUR. 


The  machine -g\ans  were  of  three  types — a 
Hotchkiss,  used  in  the  fortresses,  a  Maxim  of 
much  the  same  pattern  and  weights  as  those 
of  other  armies,  and  a  new  type  named  the 
•*Berthier,"  a  light  automatic  weapon  weighing 
only  181b.  This  was  frequently,  if  not  always, 
movinted  (for  transport  only)  on  a  light  two- 
wheeled  carriage  drawn  by  dogs.  The  cavalry 
machine  guns  had  pack  transport.  W  hen  in 
action  all  field  machine  guns  were  tripod - 
mounted. 

On  the  whole,  then,  as  regards  weapons 
Belgium  was  on  a  level  with  her  contemporaries, 
but  in  no  way  ahead  of  them,  for  even  the 
light  machine-gun  had  been  introduced  into  the 
Danish,  Rxissian,  and  other  armies. 

The  same  can  hardly  be  said  of  the  uniforms 
and  the  infantry  equipment.  The  Belgian 
linesmen  went  into  action  against  the  grey 
Germans  wearing  the  blue  tunic  or  greatcoat, 
the  heavy  knapsack,  and  the  white  buff 
accoutrements  of  peace  time.  Trials  had  re- 
cently been  made  of  a  khaki  field  uniform,  but 
none   such  had  been   adopted. 

As  we  have  already  seen,  the  older 
fortifications  of  Antwerp  represent  Brial- 
mont's  youth,  and  those  of  Liege  and  Namur, 
and  some  of  the  newer  Antwerp  forts,  his 
maturity,  while  the  newer  Antwerp  works 
are  more  modem  in  design  than  even  Brial- 
mont's  final  plans.  The  first,  constructed 
before  the  days  of  the  siege  howitzer 
shell,  scarcely  concern  us.  But  the  second  and 
third  call  for  more  detailed  description,  and  for 


that  purpose  we  taKe  two  of  Brialmont's 
designs — one  for  a  large  fort  with  an  internal 
keep,  and  one  for  a  "  fortin  "  or  smaller  work. 
The  ring  fortresses  of  Namur  and  Liege  were 
simply  combinations  of  these  forts  and 
"  fortins,"  varied  slightly  in  detail  to  suit  the 
sites. 

The  larger  tort  shown  is  five -sided,  and 
surrounded  by  a  deep  ditch,  of  which 
the  counter-scarp  is  a  masonry  wall,  while  the 
earthen  escarp  is  simply  the  prolongation  of  the 
exterior  slope  of  the  parapet.  Behind  the 
counter-scarp  wall  and  running  along  almost 
its  whole  length  is  a  vaulted  gallery,  which 
at  the  angles  of  the  ditch  is  pierced  for  machine- 
guns  and  rifles,  so  as  to  sweep  the  floor  of  the 
ditch  at  the  moment  of  assault.  From  this 
gallery  small  galleries  rvin  outwards  and  down- 
wards at  right  angles  to  enable  the  defenders 
to  counter-attack  the  besiegers'  mining 
operations,  and  other  galleries  communicate 
with  the  fort  below  the  floor  of  the  ditch.  This 
counter-scarp  gallery,  therefore,  is  the  main 
defence  of  the  fort  during  the  final  stages  of 
the  besiegers'  advance,  both  against  his  assault 
overground  across  the  ditch,  and  against  his 
mining  operations  underground,  and  it  is 
itself  practically  secure  against  any  form  of 
attack  except  slow  and  systematic  mining — 
imless,  indeed,  artillery  of  quite  unforeseen 
power  were  to  be  brought  against  it,  in  which 
case   it   would   succumb   like  any  other  works. 

In  the  rear   (or   "  gorge ")  oi  the  fort  the 
escarp  is  of  masonry,  and  galleried  and  pierced 


THE zTIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


39 


BELGIAN    SOLDIERS    IN    BRUSSELS. 


so  as  to  command  the  floor  of  the  ditch.  The 
parapet  of  the  fort  is  a  plain  infantry  breast- 
work, with  steel  gun-cupolas  bedded  in 
concrete  at  intervals. 

Within  this  five-sided  work  and  separated 
from  it  by  an  inner  ditch  is  a  triangular 
mass  of  concrete,  galleried  and  pierced  on 
its  rear  side  to  sweep  the  rear  of  the  inner 
ditch*  and  on  all  sides  so  as  to  give 
fire  upwards  upon  the  interior  of  the  outer  fort, 
and  so  to  prevent  an  enemy  who  has  stormed 
the  front  part  from  establishing  himself  solidly 
in  the  interior  and  to  keep  open  a  way  for 
reinforcements  by  way  of  the  rear  side  or 
"  gorge."  Access  from  the  outer  fort  to  the 
inner  ditch  is  obtained  through  a  tunnel  f  rom 
a  well  or  sunk  "  area,"f  all  parts  of  which 
are  kept  under  fire  by  carefully  sloping  the 
earth  on  the  inner  side,  glacis -fashion,  so  as  to 
bring  it  under  the  observation  of  a  cupola 
m      the      centre      of      the      triangular     keep. 


"The    counter-scarp  galleries  at  the  apex    provide    for    ditch 
defence  on  the  front  faces. 

tThis  sunk   "area  "  also  assists  in  limiting  the  space  open  to 
the  assailant  after  penetrating  the  outer  fort. 


The  smaller  fort  is  a  triangular  work  of  simpler 
trace,  and  without  provision  for  interior  de- 
fence. At  the  angles  of  the  triangle  are  small 
cupolas  for  light  quick-firing  guns.  The  in- 
fantry parapet  is  traced  somewhat  in  the  shape 
of  a  heart,  and  in  the  hollow  of  this  heart  is 
a  solid  central  mass  of  concrete,  on  which  are  the 
shelters  and  gim-cupolas.  The  mortar-cupolas 
emerge  from  the  fioor  of  the  hollow,  outside  the 
central  mass.  Ditch  defence  is  provided  for  the 
front  faces  by  counter-scarp  galleries,  and  for  the 
rear  face  by  the  trace  and  loopholes  of  the  escarp 
gallery,  as  in  the  case  of  the  larger  fort. 

By  the  later  engineers,  though  cupolas  and 
concrete  were  iised  freely,  the  upright  escarps 
and  deep  ditches  and  general  costly  massiveness 
of  Brialmont's  works  were  replaced,  in  Belgiirm, 
as  in  other  countries,  by  glacis-ditches ;  that  is, 
the  parapet  slope  was  continued  outwards  and 
downwards  until  the  proper  depth  was  reached 
for  the  building  up  of  a  steep,  forbidding  counter- 
scarp. Entanglements  and  steel  fences  were 
fixed  on  this  slope  as  a  barrier  to  sudden 
assault.  The  gun-cupolas  were  placed  much 
as  they  were  in  Brialmont's  designs,  but  ia 


AO 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


BELGIAN    TROOPS. 


general  the  earthen  slopes  were  longer  and 
flatter. 

The  Antwerp  fortifications  were  (1)  the  1859 
enceinte,  already  alluded  to  as  a  fine  example 
of  the  old"  polygonal  "  fortification,  and  still 
possessing  military  value  against  all  forms  of 
attack  except  a  regular  siege,  although,  of  course, 
powerless  to  protect  the  town  against  bombard, 
ment ;  (2)  the  "  old  "  forts,  a  partial  ring  of 
self-contained  works  at  regular  intervals  of 
2,200  yards,  and  at  an  average  distance  of  3,500 
yards  from  the  enceinte  ;  these  were  built  at  the 
same  time  as  the  enciente  and  at  first  extended 
only  from  the  river  at  Hoboken,  above  the  city, 
to  the  railway  running  out  of  Antwerp  eastward, 
but  after  1869  were  reinforced  by  Fort  Merxem, 
north  of  the  city,  and  Forts  Cruybeke  and 
Zwyndrecht  to  the  west  of  the  Scheldt,  to  which 
was  presently  added  the  combined  fort  and  coast- 
battery,   Sainte -Marie,  on  the  lower    Scheldt ; 

(3)  the  first  instalment  of  the  "  new  "  forts, 
built  in  1879  and  the  following  years 
by  Brialmont ;  these  marked  the  most 
important  points  of  an  immense  de- 
fended area,  Rupelmonde — Waelhem  near 
Malines  —  Lierre  —  Schooten — Berendrecht  ; 

(4)  the  second  instalment  of  the  "  new  forts," 
which  were  completed  in  1913,  and  filled  up  the 
wide  intervals  left  unguarded  in  the  preliminary 
scheme ;  (5)  the  defences  commanding  the 
ship-channel,  of  which  the  water  batterj'  of  Fort 


Sainte  Marie  with  its  long  row  of  casemate  guns 
at  the  water  level  behind  heavy  masses  of 
curved  armour  was  perhaps  the  most  effective ; 
(6)  the  inundated  areas.  It  is  to  be  noted  that 
the  old  forts  of  class  (2)  received  new  cupolas 
and  additional  concrete  at  the  same  time  as  the 
works  of  class  (4)  were  built. 

As  the  base  of  the  field  army  and  the  final 
keep  of  the  Kingdom,  Antwerp  had  generally 
been  well  cared  for.  With  Liege  and  Namiir, 
however,  matters  were  different.  They  were 
intended  originally  as  barrier-fortresses,  to  be 
held  only  for  a  few  days,  and  many  authorities 
declared  that  any  fiu-ther  development  of  them 
as  fortresses  in  the  ordinary  sense  was  vm- 
desirable  in  the  general  interests  of  the  defence. 
Only  the  strong  will  and  personality  of  Brial- 
mont made  them  what  they  were,  for  good  and 
evil,  and  the  war  gave  no  final  answer  to  the 
question,  since  the  resistance  of  L^ege  sur- 
prised those  who  regarded  it  as  a  mere  barrier 
position  while  the  swift  overwhelnoing  of 
Namur  was  equally  startling  to  those  who 
looked  upon  it  as  a  fortress. 

Liege  possessed  a  ring  of  six  forts  and  six 
"  fortius,"  Namur  a  ring  of  four  forts  and  five 
"  fortius  "  of  the  two  kinds  described  above, 
or  analogous  types.  The  armaments  were  the 
same  in  all  cases — two  6in.,  four  4'7in.,  two 
8in.  mortars,  four  light  quickfirers  for  the  forts, 
two  6in.,  two  4- Tin.,  one  (or  two)  Sin.  mortars. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


41 


OS^Denis 


O  77///er 


^Varisoulx 

FT  DE  COGNELEEVr/  '^'"^"^"^fl^tte 
Bovesse  Daussou/Ar->^  ° 


Mingeon 


OGelbressee 


o    *r     \     /.■v»' 

rD°ESlJARLE\c*'^'' 


Suarl6e 


Boninne^   Marche-Zes-Dames 


THE    DEFENCES    OF    NAMUR. 


and  three  light  qmckfirers  for  the  "  fortins." 
Including  separately  emplaced  guns,  Liege  had 
400  and  Namur  350  pieces. 

Searchlights  and  the  necessary  stores  and 
supplies  for  resisting  a  siege  were  reported  as 
ready  and  complete  in  the  winter  of  1913, 
even  the  line  enlargement  being  in  position. 

But  what  was  true  for  the  forts  individually 
was  not  altogether  true  for  the  fort  ring  as  a  whole, 
for  bomb-proof  infantry  redoubts  would  have 
guarded  the  intervals  of  the  forts  far  more 
effectually  than  the  mere  field  defences  that 
were  hastily  thrown  up  after  mobilization. 
The  uses  and  design  of  such  redoubts  were 
well  known  to  all  European  engineers,  and  it 
can  only  be  supposed  that  no  definite  decision 
to  treat  Liege  and  Namur  as  fortresses  had 
ever  been  reached. 

One  other  consideration  miast  be  mentioned. 
At  the  time  when  the  cupolas  were  con- 
structed and  the  depth  of  the  concrete 
detennined,    the   typical   siege    gun  was    the 


6-inch  howitzer.  But  artillery  had  made 
great  progress  since  the  siege  of  Port  Arthur 
had  afforded  definite  data  as  to  the  numbers 
and  kinds  of  guns  required,  and  8 -inch  and  even 
11 -inch  howitzers  could  now  be  mounted  on 
wheeled  carriages  and  brought  into  actior 
without  waiting  to  make  concrete  beds  foi 
them. 

The  resisting  power  of  the  cupolas  was  there- 
fore, in  August,  1914,  somewhat  doubtful,  and 
this  doubt  cannot  but  have  intensified  in  the 
minds  of  the  Belgian  staff  theiir  more  general 
doubts  as  to  the  wisdom  of  treating  the 
Meuse  places  as  fortresses  at  a^ll.  These  doubts, 
indeed,  had  been  partially  allayed  by  the 
manoeuvres  of  1913,  in  which  the  "Red" 
Army  attacked  Namur  from  the  East  and  was 
repulsed,  even  though  the  umpires  allowed  the 
attack  to  smother  the  cupolas  in  a  few  hours. 
But  manoeuvres  and  realities  may  differ,  and 
until  the  heavier  shell  was  actually  pitted  against 
the  cupola  in  war,  indecision  was  bound  to 


42 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


ANTWERP. 


remain.  Had  the  new  army  scheme  been  com- 
plete in  August,  1914,  a  clear  policy  one  way 
or  the  other  as  to  the  Mouse  forts  would  ipso 


facto  have  been  decided  upon.  As  it  was,  in 
this  as  in  other  matters  of  defence,  Belgium 
was  caught  at  a  moment  of  transition. 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE    GERMAN   INVASION    OF 
LUXEMBURG    AND    BELGIUM. 


The  Wak  Begins — German  Seizure  of  Luxemburg — ^Useless  Protests — Preparations  fob 
Defence — ^Unexpectedness  of  German  Attack — Courageous  Belgian  Resistance — Negotia- 
tions Stiix  in  Progress — Object  of  German  Strategy — Speech  by  King  Albert — The  Cross- 
ing OF  the  Belgian  Frontier — Limburg  and  Verviers — Meuse  Bridges  Destroyed — ^The 
Attack  on  Vise — First  Reports  of  Massacres  Untrue — Anomalous  Position  of  the  Garde 
CiviQUE — German  Force  Ambushed — Belgian  Civilians  Involved — German  Reprisals — 
"  Frightfulness." 


IN  the   very   early   days   of  August,   1914, 
Europe  passed    suddenly  from    the  cool 
ante -chamber  of  politics  into  the  heated 
arena  of  war.     The    war,    as    we    have 
seen,    opened   with    the    German    invasion  of 
Belgium.     The  first  military  opieration  of   real 
importance  was  the  attack  on  Liege. 

In  order  to  comprehend  the  piirport  of 
the  sudden  onslaught  upon  Liege  and  the 
full  importance  of  the  check  which  its 
unexpectedly  gallant  defence  inflicted  upon 
the  Germans,  it  is  necessary  to  note  the 
success  which  had  attended  the  first  step 
of  their  advance,  in  Luxemburg.  Here 
almost  everything  went  in  accordance  with 
the  general  German  plan,  which  was  secretly 
and  swiftly  to  move  a  large  but  lightly-equipped 
force  towards  the  Franco -Belgian  frontier. 
The  light  equipment  was  due  to  the  necessity 
for  rapid  and  secret  movement  and  also  to  the 
belief  in  Berlin  that  the  troops  would  obtain 
provisions  in  Belgium  and  that  ammunition 
and  transport  trains  with  the  heavy  artillery 
could  be  sent  on  after  the  mask  was  thrown 
off  and  woTild  reach  the  troops  before  they 
were  seriously  needed.  Thus  it  was  possible 
for  the  advance  guard  to  take  Luxemburg 
completely  by  surprise.  During  the  night  of 
Saturday,   August   1,   German  soldiers  arrived 


and  occupied  the  station  as  well  as  the  railway 
bridges  on  the  Treves  and  Trois  Vierges  lines 
so  as  to  ensure  the  subsequent  passage  of  Ger- 
man troop  trains  through  the  Grand  Duchy, 
and  on  Simday,  August  2,  the  population  of 
Luxemburg  awakened  to  find  that  they  were 
no  longer  free  citizens  in  their  own  country, 
because  all  the  means  of  communication  were 
in  the  hands  of  detachments  of  soldiers  ia 
German  uniform,  commanded  in  many  cases 
by  officers  in  whom  the  surprised  citizens 
recognized  men  who,  up  to  two  days  previously, 
had  been  masquerading  as  employees  in  offices 
in  Luxemburg.  There,  of  course,  they  had 
acquired  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  topo- 
graphy of  the  place  and  all  its  internal  arrange- 
ments, which  enabled  them  not  only  to  place 
the  soldiers  everywhere  to  the  best  advantage, 
but  also  to  indicate  where  stores  of  provisions 
could  be  commandeered  and  what  persons  should 
be  arrested  in  furtherance  of  German  plans. 
Against  a  plot  so  cunningly  devised  and  so 
effectively  carried  out  the  citizens  of  Luxem- 
bvirg  were  helpless. 

This  might  not  have  been  the  case  if  Europe, 
only  half  a  century  ago,  could  have  foreseen 
the  rise  of  a  great  military  Power  in  Germany 
which  would  regard  international  treaties  as 
mere   "  scraps  of  paper,"  because  the  position 


43 


44 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


THE  REIGNING  GRAND  DUCHESS  MARIE 
ADELAIDE  OF  LUXEMBURG. 

of  Lxixemburg,  which  has  sometimes  been 
compared  to  Jerusalem  and  sometimes  to 
Gibraltar,  makes  it  one  of  the  great  natviral 
strongholds  of  the  earth.  The  city  stands  on  a 
rocky  plateau,  with  precipitous  descents  of 
several  hundred  feet  upon  three  sides,  and  is 
only  connected  with  the  neighbouring  coimtry 
on  the  west — i.e.,  towards  France.  Thus  it 
seemed  to  have  been  placed  as  the  natural 
barrier  against  advance  from  the  German  side ; 
and  the  fortifications,  chiefly  hewn  out  of  the 
solid  rock,  had  been  so  increased  and 
strengthened  by  the  Spaniards,  Austrians, 
French,  and  Dutch,  who  had  held  Lvixemburg 
in  successive  ages,  that  in  the  middle  of  the  last 
century,  before  the  days  of  high  explosives, 
it  was  held  to  be  second  only  to  Gibraltar  in 
impregnability  if  resolutely  defended. 

But,  as  has  been  said,  Europe  did  not  foresee 
that  a  time  could  come  when  an  armed  German 
Empire  would  strive  to  abolish  international 
honour  as  a  factor  in  world-politics.  So  the 
mighty  fortifications  of  Luxemburg  were  de- 
molished   in    accordance   with   the   Treaty   of 


London  in   1867  and  beautiful  public   gardens 
were  laid  out  in  their  place. 

This  was  a  great  triumph  of  civilization, 
substituting  a  mere  scrap  of  paper  and  the 
national  honour  of  its  signatories  for  the 
frowning  forts  with  their  snarling  embrasures 
toothed  with  guns !  No  doubt  there  were 
niany  among  the  cultured  German  officers  who 
strolled  amid  the  roses  and  lavender,  never 
more  beautiful  or  fragrant  than  in  the  early 
August  of  1914's  wondrous  svunmer,  who  had 
studied  the  history  of  Evu-ope  enough  to  realize 
that  their  Kaiser  had  in  very  deed  made  a 
name  for  himself  unUke  that  of  any  potentate 
in  the  previous  annals  of  the  world. 

At  this  time,  of  course,  the  great  gorges 
of  Luxemburg  were  spanned  by  fine  viaducts, 
and  of  these  the  most  important  to  the  Germans 
was  the  Adolf  Bridge,  which  they  had  carefully 
seized  on  the  night  of  August  1. 

The  first  to  attempt  a  futile  resistance  was 
M.  Eyschen,  a  member  of  the  Cabinet,  who 
drove  his  motor-car  across  the  Adolf  Bridge 
and  confronted  the  leading  officer  of  the 
German  advance  guard  with  a  copy  of  the 
Treaty,  guaranteeing  the  neutrality  of  the 
State.  To  this  the  German  officer  merely 
replied  that  he  was  acquainted  with  the  Treaty, 
but  had  his  orders.  The  Archduchess  Marie 
Adelaide,  who  also  tried  to  block  the  bridge 
with  her  motor-car,  and  General  Vandyck, 
Conunandant  of  Loixemburg,  who  arrived  in 
anger  to  protest,  fared  no  better,  for  the  former 
was  simply  told  to  go  home  at  once  and  the 
latter  was  confronted  with  a  revolver. 

On  the  same  day  the  Imperial  Chancellor 
at  Berlin  telegraphed  to  the  Luxemburg  Govern- 
ment that  no  hostile  act  against  the  Grand 
Duchy  had  been  taken,  but  only  measures 
necessary  to  secure  the  safety  of  Germsua 
troops  by  protecting  the  railways  of  Luxem- 
burg against  a  possible  attack  by  the  French. 

Having  thus  seized  Luxemburg  the  Germans 
lost  no  time  in  strengthening  their  position 
against  attack,  destroying  for  this  piu-pose 
all  the  villas,  farm-houses,  woods,  and  standing 
crops  which  might  have  provided  cover  for  an 
enemy.  At  the  same  time  no  pretext  was  too 
flimsy  for  the  arrest  of  the  citizens  as  spies. 
Thus  Luxemburg  began  to  appreciate  fully 
the  blessings  of  German  rule. 

In  a  few  days  Luxemburg  began  to  wonder 
why  the  tide  of  German  invasion  did  not  pass  on 
more  quickly  towards  France  ;  but  the  fac  t  was 
that  the  tide  heid  received  asx  unexpected  check 
elsewhere,  which  delayed  it  all  along  the  line. 
The  light  equipment  of  the  invading  force  had 
proved   to   be   too   light   to   break   down   the 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


45 


Belgian  barrier  at  Liege.  Provisions  and 
ainmvinition  ran  short,  and  the  attacking  army 
was  obhged  to  wait  not  only  for  these,  but  also 
for  the  heavy  guns  wliich,  according  to  the 
original  plan,  were  to  have  been  sent  on  com- 
fortably through  Belgium,  behind  the  victorious 
army  of  occupation,  because  they  would  pro- 
bably not  be  needed,  except  to  batter  down 
the  forts  of  Paris  ! 

The  resistance  of  Liege  upset  all  these 
plans,  although  the  actual  circumstances 
of  the  fighting  which  led  to  this  result  were 
equally  puzzling  at  the  moment  to  Belgiiun's 
friends  and  foes. 

It  was  on  August  2  that  Germany 
had  already  signified  the  value  which 
she  attached  to  "  scraps  of  paper "  by 
seizing  Luxemburg,  whose  neutrality  she 
was  bound  by  treaty  to  respect  and  protect. 
Baron  de  Broqueville,  Chief  of  the  Belgian 
Cabinet,  declared  on  that  date  his  conviction 
that  Belgian  territory  would  not  be  violated. 
Nevertheless,  no  effort  was  being  spared  to 
make  ready  for  the  worst,  although  perhaps  not 
even  the  Belgians  dreamed  at  that  moment  of 
the  frightful  ordeal  which  was  coming  upon 
their  country — almost  with  the  suddenness  of  a 
thunderbolt  from  a  blue  sky — or  the  splendid 
heroism  with  which  it  would  be  met. 

At  the  end  of  July,  when  the  storm  was  about 
to  burst,  13  classes  of  Belgian  recruits 
had  been  called  to  the  colours  ;  but  even  so  the 
entire  army  numbered  only  200,000  men — 
a  total  which  in  a  historical  retrospect  of  the 
forces    subsequently    engaged,    scarcely    seems 


M.  EYSCHEN, 
The  Minister  of  State  for  Luxemburg. 

more  than  a  group  of  men  struggling  against 
the  first  waves  of  the  grey-green  tide  of  troops 
by  which  they  were  soon  inevitably  sur- 
rounded and  thrown  back. 

Perhaps  no  better  evidence  of  the  unexpected- 
ness of  the  smashing  blow,  deliberately  pre- 
pared and  remorselessly  delivered,  against 
Belgium  can  be  found  than  the  fact  that  in 
The  Times  report  of  the  British  Cabinet  meeting 
in  London  on  the  following  day  it  was  pointed 
out  that  no  necessity  had  as  yet  arisen  for 
dissensions      in      the      Government       ranks. 


VIEW  OF  LUXEMBURG. 

£!rom  a  corner  of  the  old  fortifications,  which  were  turned  into  public  gardens  because  the  Eviropean  Powers 
had  signed  a  "  scrap  of  paper  "  which  was  supposed  to  render  the  fortress  unnecessary. 


> 


46 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAB. 


THE  ADOLF  BRIDGE  AND  VIADUCT,  LUXEMBURG. 

It  was  in  order  to  obtain  possession  of  this  bridge  that  the  German  plot  to  seize  Luxemburg  by  surprise 
was  necessary,  because  it  was  practically  the  only  means  of  access  to  the  city  from  the  side  of  Germany. 
It  was  at  this  spot  that  the  Archduchess  and  the  Commandant  and  M.  Eyschen  offered  a  futile  opposition. 


because  the  occasion  had  not  yet  arisen  at 
which  "  the  plain  and  acknowledged  duty 
and  interest  of  this  country — the  preservation 
of  Belgium,  Holland,  and  Luxemburg  against 
German  invasion  "  needed  to  be  fulfilled.  So 
far  were  British  observers  from  comprehending 
the  cynical  contempt  of  Germany  for  her 
sacred  obligations  that  in  reviewing  the  con- 
siderations which  impelled  Britain  to  support 
France  it  was  pointed  out  by  The  Times  that 
' '  if  once  the  German  armies  are  allowed  to 
crush  France,  not  only  will  England  be  unable 
to  preserve  the  independence  of  Holland, 
Belgium,  and  Luxemburg,"  &c.  ^Vhat  wee  in 
British  minds  was  that  we  should  be  compelled 
to  support  France  primarily  to  prevent  the 
violation  of  Belgium,  not  that  we  should  need 
to  combine  with  France  to  exact  vengeance 
for  unhappy  Belgium  ruthlessly  outraged  and 
shockingly  mutilated. 

And  if  few  of  us  anticipated  the  callous 
brutality  which  the  Teuton  was  about  to  dis- 
play to  an  indignant  world,  still  fewer  could 
have  foreseen  the  magnificent  courage  with 
which  the  Uttle  Belgian  nation  flung  itself  in 
the  way  of  the  Kaiser's  armed  millions.  Had 
even  the  Belgians  been  able  to  calculate  before- 
hand the  price  which  they  would  be  called  upon  to 
pay  for  doing  their  duty  to  themselves  and  to 
Europe,  flesh  and  blood  might  have  proved  too 
weak.  But  honour  does  not  count  costs  be- 
forehand, and  to  the  eternal  glory  of  Belgium  be 
it  said  that  she  went  straight  with  head  erect  and 
step  unflinching  into  the  hell  upon  earth  which 
the  Kaiser's  hordes  had  prep£u:ed  for  her. 


Even  after  the  German  guns  had  spoken  to 
Liege,  so  httle  did  we  think  in  Britain  of  the 
value  of  Belgian  resistance  that  in  the  tables 
then  pubUshed,  in  Berlin  as  in  London,  of  the 
amaed  strength  of  the  conflicting  parties 
no  mention  whatever  was  made  of 
the  Belgian  army  ;  for  who  could  have 
foreseen  that  its  gallant  handful  of 
men  would  be  able  to  do  much 
more  than  vehemently  protest  against 
the  high-handed  breach  of  treaty  obligations 
by  the   German  hosts  ? 

Even  the  Belgians  themselves  seem  to  have 
expected  to  make  little  armed  resistance ; 
because,  several  days  after  the  outbreak  of 
war,  the  Paris  correspondent  of  The  Times 
stated  that  among  the  foreigners  applying  for 
enrolment  in  the  French  Army  "  Italians, 
Belgians,  and  Dutch  form  the  majority."  If 
those  Belgians  had  only  dimly  foTeseen  the 
halo  of  mihtary  glory  so  soon  to  crown  their 
countrymen  in  arms  at  home  it  would  not  have 
been  in  the  ranks  of  France  that  they  would 
have  sought  to  answer  the  call  of  honour. 

And  it  is  greatly  to  the  credit  of  the  Belgian 
Government  that,  even  when  the  army  had 
been  mobilized  and  100,000  men  were  hurrying 
to  the  frontier  in  every  direction,  it  endeavoured 
to  maintain  the  strictest  neutrality,  as  was 
shown  in  Brussels  on  August  2  by  the  seizure 
of  the  Petit  Bleu  for  pubUshing  an  article 
headed  "  Vive  France !  "  ;  and  in  the  British 
Press  of  the  same  date  it  was  merely  announced 
that  "  general  mobilization  is  taking  place  in 
Belgium,  Holland,  Denmark,  and  Switzerland," 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


47 


as  though  these  four  countries  were  placed  on 
the  same  level  of  semi-detached  interest  in 
the  threatened  war. 

Even  while  the  violation  of  Belgium  was  in 
progress  Europe  had  no  knowledge  that  the 
crime  was  done.  The  leading  article  in  The 
Times  of  August  3,  dealing  with  the  situation 
generally,  said: — "Yesterday  it  was  Luxem- 
burg. To-day  it  may  be  Belgium  or  Holland." 
And  so  it  was  :  for  on  that  day  we  learned  that 
Germany  had  followed  up  her  illegitimate 
invasion  of  Luxemburg  by  an  ultimatum  to 
Belgium.  She  had  indeed  offered  terms. 
If  Belgium  would  but  allow  German  troops  to 
use  her  territory  as  a  basis  for  an  attack  on 
France,  Germany  would  undertake  to  respect 
her  integrity.  In  case  of  refusal  Germany 
threatened  to  treat  Belgium  as  an  enemy. 

To  this  the  Belgian  Government  worthily 
replied  that  Belgium  had  too  high  a  regard  for 
her  dignity  to  acquiesce  in  the  proposal,  that 
she  refused  to  faciUtate  the  German  operations, 
and  that  she  was  prepared  to  defend  energetic- 
ally her  neutrality,  which  was  guaranteed  by 
treaties  signed  by  the  King  of  Prussia  him- 
self. 

Subsequent  rapid  negotiations  made  no  im- 
pression upon  the  little  country's  loyalty  to  her 
treaty  obligations ;  and,  even  while  these 
negotiations  were  proceeding,  Germany,  with 
cym'cal  disregard  of  the  international  etiquette 
which  would  have  embarrassed  at  this  juncture 
the  action  of  any  more  punctilious  Power,  had 
already  sent  troops  across  the  Belgian  frontier 
near  Liege. 

The  obvious  object  of  the  Germans  in  in- 
vading Belgium  was,  as  has  been  adequately 
explained  in  Chapter  II.,  to  avoid  a  difficult 
frontal  attack  upon  the  troops  and  fortresses 
on  the  eastern  frontier  of  France,  by  using  the 
triangle  of  Belgium  between  Namur,  Arlon, 
and  Aix-la-Chapelle  as  a  base  from  which  to 
turn  the  left  of  the  French  defences  ;  and  it 
was  expected  that,  in  this  case,  Belgium, 
taken  by  surprise  before  her  new  Army  organiza- 
tion was  complete,  could  do  no  better  than  give 
way  before  the  German  hosts  and  unite  her 
Army  with  the  left  of  the  French  line. 

But  Belgium  could  do  better  ;  and  the  defence 
of  Liege  against  the  Germans  at  the  outset  of 
the  great  war  of  1914  took  its  place  in  history, 
at  once  and  for  all  time,  among  the  most 
glorious  events  in  the  annals  of  Europe. 

For  the  national  spirit  and  the  spirit  especially 
of  the  Army  had  risen  in  worthy  response  to 
the  brave  words  of  King  Albert,  who,  addressing 
the  extraordinary  sitting  of  the  Belgian  Par- 
Uwaent — a  large  proportion  of  whose  members 


were  already  in  campaigning  kit,  ready  to  start 
for  the  front — had  said  : — 

"  Never  since  1830  has  a  graver  hour  sounded 
for  Belgiimi.  The  strength  of  our  right  and 
the  need  of  Europe  for  our  autonomous  existence 
make  us  still  hope  that  the  dreaded  events 
will  not  occur.  If  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  resist 
an  invasion  of  our  soil,  however,  that  duty  will 
find  us  armed  and  ready  to  make  the  greatest 
sacrifices.  Our  young  men  have  already  conae 
forward  to  defend  the  Fatherland  in  danger. 

"  One  duty  alone  is  imposed  upon  us,  namely, 
the  maintenance  of  a  stubborn  resistance, 
courage,  and  union.  Our  bravery  is  proved 
by  our  faultless  mobilization  and  by  the  mvilti- 
tude  of  voluntary  engagements.  This  is  the 
moment  for  action.  I  have  called  you  together 
to-day  in  order  to  allow  the  Chambers  to  par- 
ticipate in  the  enthusiasm  of  the  country. 
You  will  know  how  to  adopt  with  urgency  all 
necessary  measures.  Are  you  decided  to 
maintain  inviolate  the  sacred  patrimony  of 
our  ancestors  ? 

"  No  one  will  fail  in  his  duty,  and  the  Army 
is  capable  of  performing  its  task.  The  Govern- 
ment and  I  are  fully  confident.  The  Govern- 
ment is  aware  of  its  responsibilities,  and  will 
carry  them  out  to  the  end  to  guard  the  supreme 


PALACE  OF  THE  GRAND  DUCHESS 
OF    LUXEMBURG. 


48 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY     OF    THE     WAR. 


welfare  of  the  eoiantry.  If  a  stranger  should 
violate  otir  territory  he  will  find  all  the  Belgians 
gathered  round  their  Sovereign,  who  will  never 
betray  his  constitutional  oath.  I  have  faith 
in  our  destinies,  A  country  which  defends 
itself  wins  the  respect  of  everyone,  and  cannot 
perish. 

"  God  will  be  with  us." 

It  may  seem  surprising  that  the  attack  upon 
Liege  should  itself  have  been  in  the  nature  of  a 
surprise,  seeing  that  it  was  not  a  frontier  town 
and  fighting  between  the  Belgians  and  GSermans 
had  already  been  taking  place.  But  the  fact 
was  that  the  German  occupation  of  Verviers 
near  the  frontier  had  been  so  sudden  that  there 
was  no  adequate  Belgian  force  to  resist  them 
there,  and  the  German  troops,  coming  by  train 
part  of  the  way  to  Liege,  were  themselves 
practically  the  first  to  announce  their  arrival 
on  Belgian  soil.  Before  they  actually  reached 
Liege,  however,  the  Belgians  had  had  time  to 
tear  up  the  rails,  and  the  last  part  of  the  Grcrman 
advance  was  completed  by  road.  To  vmder- 
stand  what  had  happened  up  to  this  point — 
and  in  view  of  the  subsequent  savagery  of  the 
German  invasion,  it  is  essential  to  know  how 
it  aU  began — we  must  go  back  to  the  frontier, 
to  Verviers,  and  try  to  realize  the  actual 
conditions  under  which  German  troops,  trans- 
gressing international  law,  crossed  the  Belgian 
frontier. 


^l 

f  P  ft 

^•IBW 

7* 

^-  *^Lr  •«    ^ 

^j 

BELGIAN    SOLDIERS    SNIPING    FROM   A 

BRIDGE. 

[Sport  &■  Gtiural» 


As  far  as  Herbesthal,  the  German  town  whose 
suburbs  actually  touch  the  frontier  nearest  to 
Liege,  the  troops  had  been  conveyed  by  train, 
and  they  simply  formed  up  after  detraining  and 
took  their  places  in  the  lengthening  colimin 
on  the  road  into  Belgium. 

Thus  on  the  actual  frontier  there  was  abso- 
lutely no  resistance,  although  the  cavalry 
which  advanced  in  front  of  the  main  force  and 
penetrated  to  a  distance  beyond  the  frontier 
reported  that  stray  shots  had  been  fired  upon 
it.  These  came,  no  doubt,  from  Belgian 
sentries  or  scouts  ;  but  there  was  no  military 
opposition  to  the  German  occupation  of  Lim- 
burg,  the  first  Belgian  town  on  the  road  to 
Liege.  So  unexpected,  indeed,  had  been  the 
turn  of  events  that  the  Germans  foimd  not 
only  the  railway  intact,  but  also  the  locomotives 
and  rolling  stock,  which  were  very  useful  for 
their  transport  towards  Liege. 

The  next  Belgian  town  beyond  Limburg  was 
Verviers  ;  and  from  this  place  a  weak  Belgian 
force  had  e«wily  been  driven  by  the  German 
cavalry.  The  panic  -stricken  inhabitants  offered 
no  resistance,  only  peeping  through  closed 
shutters  at  the  invaders,  who  quietly  took 
possession  of  the  public  buildings  and  issued 
proclamations  announcing  the  annexation  of 
the  town  and  district,  appointing  a  German 
officer  as  Governor  and  warning  the  populace 
that  any  resistance  to  German  authority  would 
be  punished  immediately  with  death.  So  far, 
no  doubt,  events  had  marched  exactly  in 
accordance  with  the  Germans'  plan  ;  and,  as 
they  had  expected,  the  people  were  not  only 
meek  and  zealous  in  carrying  out  orders  for 
provisions,  but  very  soon  overcame  their  fear 
sufficiently  to  come  out  of  their  houses  and 
converse  freely  with  the  enemy.  On  the  same 
day  German  troops  entered  Belgiiun  without 
opposition  at  Dalhem,  Franconchamps,  and 
Stavelot. 

This  auspicious  beginning  was,  however, 
much  too  good  to  last.  The  "  peaceful  occupa- 
tion of  Belgian  territory  "  reported  in  the  first 
telegrams  to  Berhn  did  not  extend  for  many 
miles  ;  and  unexpected  opposition  had  a  bad 
effect  on  the  German  temper. 

The  first  serious  intimation  to  the  invader 
that  Belgian  words  of  protest  meant  effective 
deeds  to  follow  was  found  by  the  German  troops 
advancing  towards  Liege  by  Dalhem  and  Herve 
in  the  blown-up  bridges  of  the  Meuse  and  the 
Trois  Fonts  tunnels.  Thus  the  German 
attempt  to  seize  these  bridges  by  surprise  was 
foiled,  and  their  efforts  to  throw  others  over 
were  at  first  successfully  resisted.  These, 
however,  were  only  affairs  of  outposts ;    and 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


49 


VIEW  ON  THE  RIVERSIDE,  LUXEMBURG. 


[Underwood  &  Underwood. 


though  the  fortifications  of  Liege  were  in 
readiness  and  order  and  the  garrison  of  22,500 
men  apportioned  to  them  complete  in  numbers 
and  high  in  courage,  it  was  not  expected  any- 
where that  the  defence  of  Liege  by  the  Belgians 
could  exert  any  real  influencfi  ixpon  the  course 
of  the  campaign. 

This  was  no  doubt  in  the  minds  of  the 
Germans  when  they  had  crossed  the  Belgian 
frontier.     One   of    their    first    objectives   was 


naturally  Vise,  a  quiet  little  Belgian  town  just 
outside  the  Dutch  frontier,  and  occupying  a 
strategic  position  on  the  flank  of  any  force 
advancing  from  the  east  upon  Liege.  Here,  how- 
ever, the  Germans  discovered  that,  prompt  as 
their  advance  had  been,  the  Belgians  had  been  at 
least  equally  prompt :  becavise  the  bridges  had 
been  blown  up  and  they  were  forced  to  stop' 
to  build  others.  Nor  was  this  an  uninterrupted 
work.     In  one  case  the  German  engineers  were 


> 


50 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


ONE  OF  THE  INCIDENTS  WHICH  IMPEDED  THE  GERMAN  ADVANCE. 

[Sport  &  General. 


allowed  to  proceed  until  the  new  pontoon 
bridge  was  just  completed.  Then  a  concealed 
Belgian  force  opened  fire  upon  it  and  most  of 
the  engineers  perished  with  their  construction. 
Thus  the  capture  of  Vise,  which  should  have 
been  a  preliminary  to  the  partial  investment 
of  Liege  with  a  view  to  attacking  the  forts, 
was  itself  delayed  until  the  general  assault 
upon  the  forts  was  already  being  delivered. 
After  fierce  fighting  the  Germans  then  succeeded 
in  entering  Vise.  At  first,  however,  they 
did  not,  as  was  reported  at  the  time,  massacre 
the  inhabitants,  although  those  who  assisted 
the  Belgian  troops,  including  women  and 
boys  who  threw  stones,  were  remorselessly  shot 
down.  There  was,  however,  no  indiscriminate 
slaughter ;  and  it  is  some  satisfaction  to 
make  this  record,  because  the  first  accovmts 
which  reached  Englajid  of  the  capture  of 
Vis6  accused  the  Germans  of  wholesale 
atrocities,  and  these  accTisations  were  re- 
I>eated  without  reservation  and  evidently 
without  inquiry  in  later  accounts  professing 
to  be  historical.  The  indictment  against 
the  Germans  under  this  head  is  heavy  enough 
without  adding  thereto  charges  which  can- 
not be  supported  by  evidence.  Moreover, 
it  is  psirticularly  important  that  we  should 
be  scrupulously  just  and  accurate  with  regard 
to  these  initial  proceedings,  because  outrages 
committed  by  the  Germans  before  they  had 
received  any  provocation  at  all  would  mani- 


festly fall  under  a  worse  category  of  crime 
than  similar  outrages  perpetrated  as  "  reprisals," 
even  if  the  provocation,  judicially  "onsidered, 
did  not  justify  them.  For  we  must  not 
forget  that  amid  the  excitement  of  war,  and 
especially  under  the  aggravation  of  an  tinex- 
pected  and  humiliating  reverse,  most  men's 
minds  are  unfitted  to  take  a  calm,  judicial  view 
of  things  in  general,  and,  least  of  all,  the  conduct 
of  the  enemy.  You  have  only  to  listen  to  the 
unfair  and  often  absurd  insinuations  which  the 
defeated  team  in  a  hotly-contested  football 
match  usually  make  against  their  rivals  to 
understand  how  roused  passions  impair  fair 
judgment ;  and  it  is  certain  that  in  Belgium 
not  only  were  the  German  "  reprisals  "  based 
upon  untrue  rumours  of  the  conduct  of  Belgian 
civilians,  but  also  that  they  were  exaggerated 
in  extent  by  nimour  current  upon  the  Belgian 
side.  In  the  interest  of  fair  play  it  is  necessary 
to  remember  this,  and  also  to  bear  in  mind  that 
the  international  military  situation  was  gravely 
complicated  by  the  anomalous  position  of  the 
Belgian  Garde  Civique, 

As  has  been  pointed  out  in  a  previous  chapter, 
the  outbreak  of  war  came  upon  Belgium  at 
a  peculiarly  awkward  moment,  when  her 
mihtary  forces  were  in  a  state  of  transition. 
The  problem  which  she  had  had  to  solve  was 
how  to  obtain  enough  men  to  garrison  her 
great  fortresses  of  Antwerp,  Liege,  and  Namur, 
to  fill  the  ranks  of  her  modest  field  Army  of 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAB, 


51 


150,000,  and  to  maintain  adequate  reserves  in 
the  depots.  Without  a  more  stringent  system 
of  conscription  it  was  only  possible  to  bring 
the  Army  up  to  strength  by  allowing  it  to 
absorb  the  old  Garde  Civique,  a  relic  of  the 
days  when  Belgium  had  no  national  policy  and 
therefore  needed  no  force  more  military  than 
a  sort  of  armed  police.  So  it  was  decided 
to  absorb  the  Garde  Civique  into  the  Army  ; 
but  war  came  before  the  process  could  be  carried 
out,  and  when  the  Garde  Civique  gallantly  fell 
into  line  with  the  regular  Army  to  oppose  the 
German  invader  the  latter  insisted  uponj  re- 
garding it  as  a  civilian  force  which  was  breaking 
the  rules  of  war  by  taking  part  in  military 
operations.  The  Garde  Civique  possessed  all 
the  attributes  of  soldiers,  and  wore  a  distinct 
uniform.  But  the  Germans  found  in  them  a 
part  of  the  Belgian  forces  which  might  be 
excluded  by  the  threat  of  treating  them  as  non- 
combatants.  Eventually  Belgium  withdrew 
them.  The  shooting  of  a  captured  member 
of  the  Garde  Civique  was  inevitably  regarded 
by  the  Belgians  as  the  murder  of  a  prisoner 
and,  by  the  Germans  as  merely  the  execution 
of  a  spy.  Such  occurrences,  however,  natiirally 
exasperated  the  Belgians  ;  and  it  is  therefore 
some  consolation  to  know  that  even  Belgian 
witnesses  exonerate  the  Germans  from  the 
charge  of  committing  entirely  unprovoked 
atrocities  on  the  occasion  of  the  capture  of 
Vise.     In  the  first  full  narrative  of  the  attack 


upon  Liege,  which  was  sent  to  The  Times,  it 
is  expressly  stated  : — 

"  After  fierce  fighting  the  German  troops 
succeeded  in  entering  Vis6.  They  did  not, 
however,  as  has  been  reported,  massacre  the 
inhabitants  of  this  place.  With  the  exception 
of  a  few  civilians  who  were  shot  during  the 
attack,  the  civil  population  was  not  much 
interfered  with.  Fire  broke  out  in  several 
quarters,  but  the  town  was  not  fired 
deliberately." 

This  passage,  quoted  from  a  narrative  which 
was  instinct  throughout  with  sympathy 
and  admiration  f  >r  the  Belgians  in  tl  eir 
gallant  struggle,  is  very  important,  because  it 
shows  that  the  Germans,  whatever  their  sub- 
sequent conduct  may  have  been,  did  not 
deliberately  adopt  brutal  methods  against  the 
Belgian  population  as  part  of  their  plan  of  cam- 
paign at  the  outset. 

Yet,  although  the  passage  quoted  above 
fairly  summarizes  the  facts,  it  was  really  at 
Vis6  that  the  Germans  first  showed  how  quickly 
their   methods   were   changing  for   the   worse. 

According  to  a  Belgian  eye-witness  the  trouble 
materialized  when  the  Germans  attempted  to 
seize  Vise  bridge  over  the  Mouse.  The  Belgians 
had  destroyed  about  50  yards  of  it  in  the  centre, 
and  when  the  first  party  of  Prussian  cavalry 
arrived  to  take  possession  they  were  almost 
annihilated  by  a  hot  fire  which  was  opened 
upon    them    by    infantry    hidden    among    the 


BELGIAN   EXPERT   SHOTS   ON  A  FAST  AUTOMOBILE. 
Who  were  continually  harassing  the  Germans. 


[Record  Pr*ss, 


52 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GERMANS   MARCHING   THROUGH   A    BURNING    VILLAGE.        [Daily  Muror. 


piers  of  the  broken  bridge.  At  the  same  time 
shots  were  fired  from  houses  near  the  bank  ; 
and,  according  to  the  account  of  the  eye-witness, 
it  was  then  that  German  troops,  coming  up 
in  support  of  the  ambushed  cavalrj%  commenced 
an  indiscriminate  massacre  of  the  inhabitants, 
although  they  had  no  proof  that  the  shots 
from  the  houses  were  not  fired  by  Belgian 
soldiers. 

When  the  latter  had  retired  and  all 
resistance  was  over,  the  remaining  inhabi- 
tants were  rounded  up  like  sheep  in  the 
centre  of  their  shattered  town  and  surrounded 
by  the  troops,  whose  commander  addressed 
the  sullen  crowd  in  French,  explaining  that 
Germany  was  "  not  at  war  with  Belgium,"  but 
that  they  must  submit  to  German  miUtarylaw, 
and  that  any  attack  upon  the  troops  would 
immediately  be  punished  with  death.  At  that 
moment  a  pistol-shot  rang  out  and  the  ofiicer 
fell  wounded ;  whereupon  a  group  of  eight 
persons  from  whose  midst  the  shot  had  come 
were  seized  and  executed,  although  it  was 
known  to  all  that  only  one  shot  had  been  fired. 
This  was  the  small  beginning  of  the  reign  of 
"  f rightfulness  "  which  subsequently  becaane 
the  admitted  rule  of  German  work  in  Belgium, 
increasing  in  ferocity  as  the  invaders'  prospects 
became  more  gloomy  and  culminating  in  the 
senseless  acts  of  vandalism  so  numerous  and  so 
terrible  that  the  accounts  of  them  make  (to 
Germany's  everlasting  shame)  a  separate  entire 
section  of  this  history  of  the  war. 

The  reference  above  to   "  frightfulness  "  a/^ 


the  "  admitted "  rule  of  German  work  in 
Belgium  is  based  upon  an  official  German 
statement  of  policy  circulated  by  wireless 
telegraphy  from  Berlin  for  the  informati  on  of  the 
world  at  large.     The  statement  was  as  follows  : — 

"  The  distribution  of  arms  and  ammunition 
among  the  civil  population  of  Belgium  had  been 
carried  out  on  systematic  lines,  and  the  authori- 
ties enraged  the  public  against  Germany  by 
assiduously  circulating  false  reports.  They 
were  under  the  impression  that,  with  the  aid  of 
the  French,  they  would  be  able  to  drive  the 
Germans  out  of  Belgium  in  two  days.  The  only 
means  of  preventing  surprise  attacks  from  the 
civil  population  has  been  to  interfere  with  un- 
relenting severity  and  to  create  examples, 
which  by  their  frightfulness  would  be  a  warning 
to  the  whole  country." 

The  opening  sentence  of  this  statement  was 
a  deliberate  falsehood  ;  because  the  German 
commanders  in  the  field  had  all  seen  the  pro- 
clamations of  the  Belgian  Government  in  the 
villages  which  they  destroyed,  urging  the  in- 
habitants to  take  no  part  in  the  fighting  for 
their  own  and  their  neighbours'  sakes  ;  and  the 
concluding  sentence — calmly  and  complacently 
issued  by  a  Government  which  had  admitted 
doing  "  wrong "  by  invading  Belgium  as  an 
excuse  for  unspeakable  atrocities  committed 
upon  Belgian  men,  women,  and  children  who 
resented  that  wrong— threw  such  a  lurid  fight 
upon  the  thing  which  the  Germans  of  the  day 
regarded  as  their  national  "  conscience  "  as  to 
horrify  the  civilized  world. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


THE    GERMAN    ARMY    AND 
GERMAN    STRATEGY„ 


The  outbreak  of  hostilities  in  Eastern  Europe — German  declaration  of  war  on 
Russia — Attitude  of  France — The  British  ultimatum — ^The  Powers  at  war — German 
offensive  against  France — The  German  Army — War  organization — Criticism  on  the 
German  Army — German  plan  of  campaign — Alternative  lines  of  attack  on  France — 
Conditions  in   1870  and    1914 — The    element    of    time — Northern    line    of     attack — ^A 

QUESTION     OF     SPACE DISADVANTAGES ADVANTAGES. 


THE  first  weeks  of  hostilities,  with 
the  remarkable  exception  of  the 
fighting  at  Liege,  were  marked 
by  few  collisions  of  importance. 
This  period  was  necessarily  occupied  with  the 
work  of  mobilization  and  concentration,  and  the 
speed  and  success  with  which  these  great  opera- 
tions were  completed  amply  testify  to  the 
power  which  modem  conditions  of  transport 
and  organization  confer  upon  the  masters  of 
armies.  Austria,  the  first  to  take  up  arms,  was 
naturally  first  in  the  field.  Her  military  pre- 
parations had  commenced  before  July  25, 
the  day  on  which  she  broke  off  diplomatic 
relations  with  Servia  ;  on  that  day  a  mobiliza- 
tion of  eight  of  her  16  army  corps  began,  and 
on  the  28th  she  formally  declared  war.  On 
the  same  day  her  troops  began  to  bombard 
Belgrade,  already  deserted  by  the  Servian 
Government.  This  act  seems  to  have  decided 
the  Tsar  ;  on  the  29th  he  signed  the  Ukase 
mobilizing  the  13  Array  Corps  of  the  four 
southern  districts  lying  opposite  the  Austrian 
frontier.  Austria  responded  by  mobilizing 
the  whole  of  her  army,  a  step  which  compelled 
Russia  at  midnight  on  the  30th  to  follow  suit. 
On  the  31st  the  German  ambassador  at  St. 
Petersburg  signified  that  Tm.less  Russia  agreed 
within  12  hours  to  demobilize  his  Government 
would  order  a  general  mobilization  by  land  and 


sea.  No  reply  being  forthcoming  orders  for  a 
general  mobilization  were  issued  by  Berlin  on 
August  1,  at  5.15  p.m.,  and  at  7.30  p.m.  the 
German  ambassador  handed  to  M.  Sazonoff 
the  declaration  ot  war.  This  step  was  hailed, 
both  at  Berlin  and  St.  Petersbiirg,  with  savage 
enthusiasm.  Not  since  1812  had  a  war  been  so 
popular  in  Russia.  During  the  following  days 
skirmishes  took  place  in  the  frontier  districts 
between  German  and  Russian,  and  later  between 
Austrian  and  Russian,  troops.  But  the  time 
necessary  to  enable  Russia  to  bring  her  maisses 
into  the  field,  and  the  defensive  attitude  assumed 
by  the  German  Powers,  prevented  any  impor- 
tant collision. 

Meanwhile  in  the  west  of  Europe  events  had 
moved  fast.  As  early  as  the  25th  July  Ger- 
many had  begun  her  preparations  ;  on  the  26th 
General  von  Moltke  had  returned  to  Berlin,  and 
the  great  General  Staff  had  commenced  work  in 
earnest.  During  the  following  days,  although 
no  public  announcement  had  been  made, 
the  military  authorities  had  taken  advantage 
of  their  large  independent  powers  to  recall 
officers  and  reservists,  and  had  taken  steps 
which  practically  amounted  to  a  veiled  mobiliza- 
tion. On  the  28th  the  German  Fleet  was 
reported  to  be  assembling  at  Kiel  and  Wilhelms- 
haven  ;  a  day,  that  is,  before  the  British  Fleet 
left  Portland.     On  the  30th  "  manoeuvres  "  at 


53 


54 


THE    TIMES-  HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


THE   PRESIDENT   OF  THE   FRENCH  REPUBLIC,  M.  POINCARfi. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


55 


MAP    OF    FRANCO-GERMAN    FRONTIER. 


Sfcrassburg  were  announced,  and  by  Friday  3 1st 
the  German  covering  troops  were  close  to  the 
French  frontier. 

The  rapidity  with  which  this  opening  con- 
centration was  effected  offers  a  striking  con- 
trast to  what  happened  in  1870.  At  that 
time  the  idea  of  a  covering  force  in  the  modem 
sense  scarcely  existed.  There  is  no  evidence 
to  show  that  on  either  side  any  considerable 
body  of  frontier  troops  was  kept  permanently 
in  a  state  of  preparedness  higher  than  the 
rest  of  the  main  armies.  Ten  days  at  least 
elapsed  before  any  serious  collision  took  place, 
and  the  hostile  offensive  was  not  met  on  the 
border  by  a  force  powerful  enough  to  check 
the  enemy  and  gain  time,  but  was  evaded, 
as  Moltke,  had  it  been  necessary  to  evade  it. 


would  have  done,  by  a  concentration  out  of 
reach  of  the  enemy,  even  at  the  cost  of  aban- 
doning a  considerable  part  of  the  frontier 
provinces.  In  1914  the  procedure  was  totally 
different.  For  many  years  it  had  been  the 
practice  both  of  Germany  and  France  to  main- 
tain the  corps  localized  on  the  frontier  on  an 
establishment  which  almost  amounted  to  a 
war  footing  and  capable  of  mobilization  in  a 
very  short  space  of  time  ;  the  German  corps 
were  held  to  be  capable  of  action  within  24 
hours.  By  the  end  of  July  it  was  believed  in 
France — and  subsequent  events  appeared  to 
justify  the  belief — that  eight  German  corps 
were  ready  to  march.  These  included,  counting 
from  north  to  south,  the  VIII.,  with  its  head- 
quarters at  Coblenz,   the  XVI.   at  Metz,   the 


56 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


THE  RIGHT  HONOURABLE  H.  H.  ASQUITH, 


[Reginald  Haines, 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


57 


COBLENZ. 


XXI.  at  Saarbriick,  the  XV.  at  Strassbvirg, 
the  XIV.  at  Karlsruhe,  the  II.  Bavarian  in 
Lorraine  and  the  Palatinate,  reinforced  by 
the  XIII.  from  Stuttgart  and  the  XVIII. 
from  Frankfurt.  With  them  was  a  very 
powerful  force  of  cavalry.  It  is  noteworthy, 
as  showing  that  mobilization  in  Germany  had 
begun  some  days  before  it  was  publicly  ordered, 
that  none  of  the  infantry  belonging  to  the 
above  forces  were  employed  in  the  attack  on 
Liege  which  began  very  early  on  the  morning 
of  August  5.  This  was  entrusted  to  other 
troops,  including  the  VII.,  X.,  and  later  the 
IX.  It  seems  to  follow  from  this  that  two 
corps  at  least,  which  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  covering  fcrce  on  the  side  of  France,  must 
have  left  their  mobilization  areas  little  more 
than  a  day  after  war  was  formally  declared. 
Luxemburg  territory  was  entered  very  early 
on  the  morning  of  August  2,  and  Belgium  only 
two  davs  later. 

In  this  trying  situation  the  behaviour 
of  the  French  Government  was  admirable. 
Well  aware  that  in  the  event  of  war  it  must 
support  Russia,  and  that  the  first  blow  of  its 
formidable  opponent  would  be  directed  against 
France,  it  yet  decided,  as  a  proof  of  the  sincerity 
of  its  desire  for  peace,  to  run  the  risk  of  being 
attacked  before  its  preparations  were  complete  ; 
and  in  ordei  to  avoid  the  possibility  ot  any  prema- 
ture collision  it  took  the  grave  and  exceptional 
step  of  withdrawing  all  its  troops  to  a  line  10 
kilometres  within  the  fron+^^ier.  The  mobiliza- 
tion of  the  covering  troops  was  not  begun  till 
the  30th  ;  and  the  order  for  the  general  mobiliza- 
tion was  not  issued  \mtil  the  night  of  the  31st, 


when  the  delivery  of  the  German  Ultimatum  to 
Russia  had  been  made  known  in  Paris.  The 
calmness  and  resolution  of  the  French  people 
were  worthy  of  their  rulers,  and  formed  an 
extraordinary  contrast  to  the  hysterical  ex- 
altation of  1870.  Such  popular  demonstra- 
tions as  took  place  arose  not  from  bellicose  but 
from  patriotic  feeling.  Everyone  knew  that 
the  national  existence  was  involved  ;  and  all 
witnesses  testify  to  the  quiet  self-devotion  of 
the  people,  and  to  the  smoothness  and  rapidity 
of  the  mobilization. 

The  steady  coolness  with  which  they  faced 
this  supreme  crisis  was  the  more  admirable  in 
that  until  August  2nd  they  could  not  be  sure 
what  attitude  England  would  adopt.  On  that 
day,  however.  Sir  Edward  Grey  was  able  to 
give  the  French  Ambassador  an  assiirance 
that,  subject  to  the  approval  of  Parliament, 
"  if  the  German  Fleet  comes  into  the  Channel 
or  through  the  North  Sea  to  undertake  hostile 
operations  against  French  coasts  or  shipping, 
the  British  fleet  will  give  all  the  protection  in 
its  power."  The  enthusiastic  reception  of  the 
announcement  of  this  decision  in  England  and 
throughout"  the  Empire,  and  the  refusal  of  the 
British  Government  to  acquiesce  in  the 
German  violation  of  Belgium,  finally  dissipated 
all  French  apprehensions.  On  the  night  of 
August  4  the  world  was  aware  that  the  whole 
might  of  the  British  Empire,  directed  with  a 
singleness  of  purpose  hitherto  unknown,  had 
been  thrown  into  the  scale  of  war. 

This  momentous  event  marks  the  outbreak 
of  active  hostilities  in  the  West  of  Europe. 
On  the  same  day  on  which  the  British  time-Iinuti 


58  THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAX. 


THE    RIGHT    HON.  SIR    EDWARD    GREY.  \H.  waiter  B^mm. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


59 


THE    AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN 

AMBASSADOR     IN    LONDON, 

COUNT    MENSDORFF. 

expired  Germany  had  declared  war  on.  France 
aid  Belgium;  and  her  troops,  which  had 
several  times  violated  French  territory  during 
the  preceding  days,  definitely  crossed  the 
frontier  of  both  states.  On  the  morning  of 
the  5th  the  attack  on  Liege  begun,  and  the 
German  mine-layer  Konigin  Lviise  was  sunk  by 
British  gun-fire  in  the  North  Sea.  On  the  6th 
the  grim  circle  was  completed  by  the  Austrian 
declaration  of  war  on  Russia.  Five  Great 
Powers  were  now  at  war,  and  some  15  millions 
of  men,  if  the  reserve  formations  are  included, 
were  arming  or  already  in  movement. 

It  was  pretty  certain  that  the  first  great  scene 
of  conflict  would  be  on  the  French  and  Belgian 
frontiers.  So  long  as  the  numerical  superiority 
of  the  British  Fleet  was  maintained  in  the 
North  Sea  it  was  unlikely  that  the  German 
Fleet  would  risk  a  general  engagement ;  while 
on  the  Russian  frontier  the  tardiness  of  the 
one  combatant  and  the  comparative  weakness 
of  the  other  militated  against  the  probability 
of  important  collisions.  But  it  was  well  known 
that  in  the  event  of  a  double  war  against 
Russia  and  France  Germany  would  take  advan- 
tage of  the  length  of  time  reqtiired  for  the 
concentration  of  the  Russian  armies  to  spring 
upon  the  nearer,  readier,  and,  as  she  hoped, 
the  weaker  of  her  two  opponents ;  and  would 
endeavour  by  a  more  rapid  concentration  to 


surprise  and  overwhelm  ner  in  the  midst  of  her 
mobilization.  The  adoption  of  such  a  plan 
was  not  merely  sound,  perhaps  inevitable,  from 
a  strategic  point  of  view,  but  it  ha,d  also  the 
recommendation  that  it  would  eventually 
bring  the  German  armies  into  a  theatre  rich 
in  supplies  and  well  roaded,  and,  above  all, 
famous  for  earlier  victories.  Three  times 
during  the  19th  century  had  the  Pnissian 
soldier  entered  Paris  and  looked  down  from, 
the  heights  of  Montmartre  on  a  prostrate 
France.  The  confidence  inspired  by  these 
recollections  would  be  the  most  valuable  of 
all  auxiliaries  in  an  offensive  operation  which 
was  to  be  carried  through  regardless  of  cost, 
at  the  highest  speed,  and  with  unflinching  reso- 
lution. The  attempt  to  realize  this  plan  was 
made ;  but  before  we  can  follow  the  events 
by  which  it  was  marked  we  must  say  something 
about  the  army  which  was  to  essay  it. 

The  German  Army  in  its  modem  shape  was 
simply  the  extension  of  the  Prussian  system 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  German  Empire. 
This  process  was  not  wholly  completed  at  the 
outbreak  of  the  war  of  1870,  but  ever  since 
the  general  Prussianization  of  all  the  German 
states  from  a  military  point  of  view  went 
steadily  forward  ;  and  both  in  general  organiza- 
tion and  in  doctrine  and  spirit  they  bore  a 
close  resemblance  to  the  central  source  of 
inspiration  and  control  at  Berlin.     The  division 


THE  GERMAN  AMBASSADOR  IN  LONDON, 
PRINCE  LICHNOWSKY.  [Lafayette. 


60 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


THE  GERMAN  IMPERIAL    CHANCELLOR,   DR.  VON    BETHMANN  HOLLWEG. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


61 


of      the     fighting     army     into     army     corps, 
and    their    establishment    as    well    as    that    of 
reserve  formations  of  landwehr  and  landsturm 
on  a  territorial  basis  was  a  general  characteristic 
of  the  whole  system,  as  of  most  great  armies. 
The  number  of  army  corps  amounted  to  25.     The 
corps  war- organization  of  1870  had  been  modified 
and  enlarged.     Each  corps  still  possessed  two 
infantry  divisions,  most  divisions  two  brigades, 
most  brigades  two  regiments,  and  nearly  every 
regiment    three    battalions,    making    a    total, 
including  a  battalion  of  riflemen,  of  25  in  all. 
But  on  mobilization  each  corps  formed  a  third 
or  reserve  division,   presumably  of   about  the 
same    strength    as    the    others    and   composed 
mainly  of  reservists  who  had  recently  left  the 
colours.     The    artillery    had    been    largely    in- 
creased, and  was  attached  in  equal  proportions 
to  the  divisions,  the  old  corps-artillery  tvhich 
played  so   remarkable  a  part  in   1870    having 
bsen  abolished.     A  cavalry  regiment  was  still 
attached  to  the  bulk  of  the  infantry  divisions. 
The  whole  fighting  organization,  as  in  the  case 
of  other  armies,  had  of  course  been    complicated 
by    the    introduction    of    varied     natures    of 
artillery  ;    not  to  mention  machine    guns,  air- 
craft,  and  the  huge  impedimenta  required  to 
bring   so   elaborate    a    machine    into    effective 
action.     Including     its    reserve    division     the 
average    corps     in     1914    probably    averaged 
something  over  40,000  rifles  and  sabres,  and 
about    150   gtins.     In   addition   to   the   army 
corps  there  were  formed  about  10  independent 
cavalry     divisions,     consisting     mostly   of  six 
regiments  in  three  brigades,  each  provided  with 
several     batteries     of     horse     artillery.     Non- 
combatants,  special  troops,  lines  of  communica- 
tion troops  and  certain    landwehr  formations 
included,  the  total  first  line  German  army  was 
computed    at    2,300,000   men   and   6,000   field 
guns  ;  but  very  large  deductions  would  have  to 
be  made  in  order  to  arrive  at  the  actual  number 
of  sabres  and  bayonets  available  for  the  shock 
of    battle.     The    movement  and  supply  of  so 
enormous  a  mass  necessitated  a  vast  number  of 
assistants    whose     duties    did    not    necessarily 
comprehend    the    business    of    fighting. 

Opinions  as  to  the  real  worth  of  this  army 
had  in  recent  years  considerably  varied.  With 
the  exception  of  the  cavalry  and  horse  artillery, 
in*  whose  case  it  was  three,  the  term  of  ser- 
vice with  the  colours  was  only  two  years  ;  but 
its  brevity  was  compensated  by  unremitting 
work,  and  no  one  doubted  that  the  physique 
and  discipline  were  of  a  high  standard.  Its 
officer  corps,  then  as  always  the  heart  and  soul 
of  the  Prussian  Army,  was  probably  one  of  the 


hardest-worked  bodies  of  men  existing.  Its 
machinery  for  supply  and  movement  was 
carefully  studied  and  every  detail  that  could 
ensure  smoothness  and  regularity  was 
thoroughly  worked  out.  The  higher  com- 
manders were  accustomed  to  deal  with  large 
bodies,  were  trained  to  disregard  loss  of  life, 
and  to  believe  in  resolute  and  united  action ; 
and  vigorous  subordinate  initiative  was  taught 
as  the  leading  principle  of  all  command.  The 
Staff-Officer  remained,  as  he  had  done  for  at 
least  a  century,  the  driving-wheel  of  the  whole 
organization,  and  possessed  an  authority  pro- 
bably unknown  in  other  armies.  The  great 
prestige  which  he  had  won  under  Moltke  was 
no  sudden  or  ephemeral  development.  Lastly 
it  may  be  added  that,  as  at  every  period  of 
the  eventful  history  of  the  German  Army, 
exactitude,  obedience  and  a  high  standard  of 
duty  were  characteristic  of  all  ranks. 

So  far  it  was  generally  admitted  that  this 
great  organization  was  a  sound  and  formidable 
machine.  Doubts,  the  justification  of  which 
could  only  be  tested  in  war,  had  from  time  to 
time  been  expressed  as  to  how  far  it  was  suited, 
individually  and  collectively,  to  the  conditions 
of  modem  war.  The  criticism  had  been  made 
that  it  was  somewhat  too  much  of  a  machine, 
and  that  organically  and  intellectually  it 
showed  signs  of  ossification.  Stress  was  laid 
upon  the  dull  and  lifeless  precision  of  the 
German  private,  and  the  antiquated  nature 
of  some  parts  of  his  armament  and  equipment. 
The  rise  of  a  French  school  of  tactics  and 
strategy,  which"  attributed  more  importance 
to  mancBuvre  and  distribution  of  forces  than  to 
the  uniform  system  of  envelopment  which  had 
been  a  characteristic  of  Moltke's  victories, 
challenged  the  adequacy  of  German  doctrine 
in  the  higher  branches  of  generalship ;  and 
the  question  as  to  whether  the  German  system 
either  in  theory  or  practice  was  sufficiently 
elastic  and  adaptable  was  often  raised.  But 
in  spite  of  all  criticism  there  were  not  many 
who,  had  they  been  asked  to  say  which  was  the 
best  of  the  great  armies,  would  not  have  chosen 
that  of  Germany.  Its  numbers  and  the  fact 
that  its  leaders  were  impregnated  with  the 
spirit  of  the  offensive  were  alone  sufficient  to 
render  it  a  most  imposing  and  formidable 
instrument    of    war. 

Four-fifths  of  this  mighty  host  were  destined 
for  the  attack  on  France,  the  remainder 
being  left,  in  conjunction  with  landwehr 
and  other  reserve  formations,  and  such  parts 
of  the  army  as  Austria  could  divert  from 
Servia,   to   contain  and  check  the  ponderous 


62 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


THE  CHIEF  OF  STAFF  OF  THE  GERMAN  ARMY,   GENERAL  VON  MOLTKE. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


63 


THE   GERMAN  FOREIGN  SECRETARY, 
HERR  VON  JAGOW. 

masses  of  Russia,  until  the  overthrow  of 
France  released  some  of  the  corps  for  service 
on  the  Eastern  frontier.  The  line  of  attack 
had  long  been  decided  on  ;  in  fact,  so  far  as 
can  be  seen,  the  Emperor  William,  less  fortunate 
than  his  grandfather,  had  little  choice.  The 
conditions  governing  the  invasion  of  France 
had  greatly  altered  since  1870.  Then,  although 
Alsace  and  Lorraine  were  not  in  German  hands, 
the  Germans  held,  with  the  exception  of 
Strassburg,  most  of  the  great  bridgeheads  on 
t'le  Rhine  ;  and  once  the  isolated  fortresses 
oa  the  Moselle  were  passed — and  they  did  not 
of  themselves  enforce  any  obligation  upon 
an  invading  army  beyond  that  of  observation 
or  investment — the  heart  of  France  lay  open 
to  an  advance  through  the  plains  of  Champagne. 
Emerging  from  the  almost  impenetrable  barrier 
of  the  Rhine  they  had  been  able  to  meet  their 
opponents  in  a  country  suited  to  large  move- 
ments of  troops  in  which  their  superior  numbers 
and  resolute  strategy  had  been  used  to  the 
best  effect.  Once  the  great  battles,  with  a  view  to 
which  all  Moltke's  preparations  had  been  made, 
had  been  won  France  lay  at  the  mercy  of  the 
enemy.  Moreover,  and  this  entered  largely  into 
his  plan  of  campaign,  an  advance  to  the  South 
of  Metz  had  offered  a  fair  chance  of  separating 
at  least  a  part  of  the  French  armies  from  their 
southern  and  south-western  lines  of  communica- 
tion and  retreat  and  driving  them  to  destruction 


against  the  neutral  frontier  of  Belgium.  How 
well  this  anticipation  was  founded  was  shown 
by  the  catastrophe  of  Sedan. 

Now,  however,  these  favourable  -conditions 
no  longer  existed.  The  military  advantages 
which  Moltke  hoped  to  reap  from  the  annexation 
of  the  frontier  provinces  and  the  transformation 
of  Metz  into  an  impregnable  point  de  debouche- 
ment  and  place  d'armes  were  largely  counter- 
balanced by  the  elaborate  line  of  forts  d'arret 
flanked  and  strengthened  by  the  fortresses  of 
Verdim,  Toul,  Nancy,  Epinal,  and  Belfort, 
with  which  the  French  had  more  or  less  com- 
pletely barred  the  central  and  southern  parts  of 
their  eastern  frontier.  The  Germans  were  there- 
fore compelled  either  to  force  this  line  of  defence, 
or  to  turn  it  and  enter  France  from  the  north- 
east. The  fu"st  alternative  was  of  itself  a  some- 
what desperate  enterprise,  not  certain  to  be 
successful,  and  certain  to  cost  much  blood, 
which  the  invaders  might  be  willing  to  lose,  and 
a  good  deal  of  time  which  they  were  not.  For 
in  considering  the  different  lines  of  attack 
open  to  the  Gernians  it  must  always  be 
remembered  that  in  the  case  of  a  war  with  France 
or  Russia  time  was  the  one  thing  they  could  not 
afford  to  waste.  Their  whole  scheme  was, 
considered  in  its  simplest  form,  a  huge  operation 
on  the  interior  line  against  divided  enemies, 
only  likely  to  succeed  if  the  first  could  be 
defeated  before  the  second  came  into  action. 


THE  FRENCH  PRIME  MINISTER, 
M.  VIVIANI. 


'> 


64 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


KING    PETER    OF    SERVIA. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


65 


M 

* 

ii  ^^H^kL*'  ' 

flto-'i 

i 

^h^^^^^^^m 

THE  CROWN  PRINCE  OF  GERMANY. 

The  second  alternative,  like  all  solutions  of 
strategic  problems,  was  attended  by  serious  dis- 
advantages. To  throw  the  German  Army 
on  a  line  of  invasion  to  the  north  of  Metz  and 
Verdiin  inevitably  involved  the  violation  of  the 
Duchy  of  Luxembvirg,  a  territory  whose  integrity 
was  guaranteed  tmder  a  treaty  dating  from  1867. 
And  since  the  vast  numbers  of  men  employed 
necessitated  a  broad  front  of  march  it  was 
pretty  certain  from  the  first  that  Luxembiirg 
would  not  be  the  only  state  whose  neutrality 
would  be  threatened.  The  breadth  of  the  Duchy 
is  only  about  40  miles,  and  whether  for  purposes 
of  march  or  battle  could  not  be  expected  under 
modern  conditions  to  accommodate  the  columns 
of  more  than  three  army  corps  abreast,  or  six 
in  double  line.  To  have  piled  up  12  or  15  corps 
in  the  space  between  Metz  and  the  northern 
border  of  the  Duchy,  would  have  been  an  un- 
thinkable military  blunder  and  would  not  have 
saved  the  Germans  from  the  accusation  of  vio- 
lating neutral  territory.  It  followed,  then,  that 
if  the  main  attack  of  Germany  was  to  be  made 
to  the  north  of  Metz,  a  violation  of  Belgium  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  Ardennes  and  Liege  was 
a  military  necessity,  however  culpable  from  other 
points  of  view.  The  only  remaining  alterna- 
tive, from  the  German  standpoint  a  wholly 
inadmissible  one,  was  to  stand  on  the  defensive 
between  the  Meuse  and  Rhine.  Their  plan  of 
campaign  involved  the  violation  of  both  Belgium 
and  Luxemburg  in  their  first  marches. 

There  were  obvious  disadvantages  attendant 
on  such  a  barefaced  affront  to  international  obli- 
gations. It  was  not  likely  that  Belgium  would 
consent  to  allow  a  free  passage  to  the  German 


troops.  Her  army  was  mobilizing,  her  people 
were  aroused ;  and  Berlin  was  aware  that 
by  infringing  the  neutrality  of  Belgium, 
Germany  was  running  a  grave  risk  of  oblig- 
ing England  to  resort  to  arms.  The  entry  of 
Great  Britain  into  the  struggle  would  be  a  terrible 
blow  for  Germany ;  that  her  Government 
preferred  to  face  the  risk  rather  than  modify 
its  plan  of  attack  proves  either  that  it  con- 
sidered that  a  decisive  victory  over  France 
would  neutralize  or  outweigh  the  hostile  action 
of  England,  or  that  England,  disunited  at  home 
and  blinded  by  a  genial  sentimentalism,  would 
suffer  the  violation  of  Belgium  to  pass  with  a 
protest. 

Apart  from  these  grave  considerations,  which 
involved  not  merely  great  strategic  risks  but 
the  reputation  of  the  German  Government, 
certain  strategic  advantages  were  undoubtedly 
conferred  by  the  Belgian  line  of  advance. 
In  the  first  place,  as  Clausewitz  long  ago  had 
pointed  out,  it  was,  considered  from  a  military 
point  of  view,  the  natural,  that  is  to  say  the 
shortest  and  straightest,  line  of  attack.  As  a 
matter  of  fact — it  is  a  point  of  no  strategic 
importance  and  is  merely  added  by  way  of 
illustration — a  straight  line  drawn  from  Berlin 
to  Pax'is  passes  close  to  Mezieres  in  rear  of  the 
Belgian  frontier.  In  the  second  place  the  area 
of  concentration  of  the  main  army  would  be 
based    on,    and   might    in   some    measure     be 


THE    CROWN    PRINCE    OF  AUSTRIA. 


> 


66 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


considered  to  be  protected  by,  the  great  Rhine 
fortress  group  of  Mainz,  Cologne,  and  Coblenz. 
The  great  system  of  railways  which  had  their 
junction  in  this  part  of  the  frontier,  some  of 
them  deliberately  built  for  the  purposes  of  such  a 
concentration,  all  favoured  the  northern  alterna- 
tive. In  the  third  place  the  country  between 
Verdun  and  Liege,  badly  roaded,  broken  and 
wooded  though  much  of  it  was,  was  compara- 
tively bare  of  fortresses,  and  offered  a  strategic 
screen  behind  which  the  invader  might  conceal 
his  dispositions,  and  a  terrain  unfavourable  to 
the  action  of  the  superior  French  artillery. 
The  fortresses  on  the  Meuse,  Liege,  and  Namur 
were  known  to  be  technically  strong,  but 
their  value  would  depend  on  whether  the  action 
of  Belgium  proved  prompt  and  resolute, 
and  on  whether.,  if  armed  resistance  was  offered, 
their  garrisons  were  strong  enough  to  make 
the  most  of  the  forts  entrusted  to  them.  When 
Lord  Sydenham  reported  on  them  in  1890  he 
had  estimated  the  minimum  of  troops  necessary 
to  hold  them  at  74,000  men  ;  and  it  was  known 
to  every  one  that  the  Belgians  were  short  of 
men.  The  policy  of  a  coup  de  main  would  at 
any  rate  be  worth  trying,  for,  as  already  pointed 
out,  the  first  essential  of  German  success  was 
speed  ;  and  the  loss  of  many  men  to  an  ar.ny 
so  nvimerous  was  of  little  account  compared 
with  the  secure  control  of  the  vaUey  of  the 
Meuse  and  the  roads  and  railways  which  the 
fortresses  commanded.  If  such  an  attack 
<  proved  successful,  if  the  Belgian  Army  could 
be  shattered  and  dashed  aside  before  French 
■  support  could  reach  it,  a  prospect  of  great  suc- 
cesses would  open  to  the  German  arms. 
The  barrier  of  the  Ardennes  and  the  Middle 
Meuse  would  be  turned,  the  supports  of  the 
French  left  shattered,  and  the  German  right, 
freed  from  obstacles,  and  gathering  weight  and 
speed  as  it  gained  speice  to  unfold  itself,  would 


descend  like  an  avalanche  upon  Paris,  forcing 
the  French  armies  to  fall  back,  and  so  enabling 
its  own  centre  and  left  to  debouch  from  the 
woods  of  the  Ardennes  and  to  press  their 
rear.  The  combination  of  momentimi  and 
envelopment  obtained  by  such  a  movement 
would  offer  a  fine  vindication  of  German 
strategic  doctrine  and,  what  was  more  im- 
portant, might  be  expected  to  result  in  the 
defeat  and  demoralization  of  the  defending 
army.  By  the  end  of  August  the  whole  of 
north-eastern  France  might  be  overrun  and  the 
German  hosts,  for  the  fourth  time  in  a  hundred 
years,  might  look  upon  the  spires  of  Notre  Dame. 

The  feasibility  of  the  plan  still  remained 
to  be  proved.  If  it  succeeded  it  seemed 
likely  to  satisfy  the  test  by  which,  we 
imagine,  aU  strategy  on  the  grand  scale 
mvist  be  tried.  That  is  to  say,  it  might  be 
expected  not  merely  to  achieve  its  nearer 
object,  the  defeat  of  the  armies  immediately 
concerned,  but  to  dominate  the  whole  campaign 
and  neutraUze  any  local  failures  in  other  parts 
of  the  theatre  of  war.  No  French  successes 
in  Alsace,  even  if  pushed  to  the  gates  of  Metz 
and  Strassbvirg,  would  compensate  for  the 
driving  of  the  main  armies  back  on  Paris. 
Once  the  invaders  had  forced  their  way  to  the 
borders  of  Belgium  they  would  stand,  strate- 
gically speaking,  in  the  same  position  as 
Wellington  and  Bliicher  in  1815 ;  and,  hke 
Wellington,  they  would  possess  the  assm-ance 
that  a  movement  upon  Paris  from  the  north- 
east woidd  inevitably  bring  a  successful  French 
offensive  towards  the  Rhine  to  a  stop  and 
compel  the  troops  to  which  it  had  been  entrusted 
to  retire  and  succo\xr  the  armies  in  the  interior. 

Such  it  may  be  imagined  were  the  calcula- 
tions of  the  great  General  Staff  at  Berlin, 
when  they  issued  orders  for  the  concentration 
on  their  western  frontiers. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  GERMAN  ARMY— 1870- 19 14. 

Traditions  of  the  Army — The  New  Arms — Literature — Moltke — ^His  Colleagues — 
The  War  of  1866  and  its  Lessons — 1870 — Prussian  Strategy — The  TacticaIj  Envelopment — 
Criticisms — ^Meckel — General  Effect  of  1870  ''n  the  Army — The  German  Constitution — 
Increases  of  Strength  to  1890— The  Law  of  1893 — Further  Increases — The  Law  of  1913 — 
Application  of  the  Principle  of  National  Service — Numbers  of  Trained  Men — The  Age 
Factor — Categories  of  Troops — Ersatz  Reserve — First  Ban  of  Landsturm — One-Year 
Volunteers — ^Non-Commissioned  Officers — Corps  of  Officers — Paramount  Influence  of 
Army  on  German  Society — Territorial  Distribution  of  the  Army — "  Inspections  " — ^Army 
Corps — Commanding  Officers — Fortresses — The  Military  Cabinet — ^War  Ministry — 
Finance — ^Readiness   for   War — Emigrant   Law  of  1913. 


THE  rise  and  decline  of  armies  is  an 
aspect  of  universal  history  which 
never  fails  to  interest,  and  with 
armies  as  with  States  the  past  has  in 
it  the  seeds  of  the  futiire.  As  it  is  impossible 
to  understand  the  character  and  organization 
of  the  formidable  enemy  opposed  to  the  Allies 
in  1914  without  some  knowledge  of  its  develop- 
ment in  the  preceding  decades,  we  propose  to 
rdvert  in  greater  detail  to  a  subject  already 
referred  to  in  Chapter  11.  The  most  natural 
starting  point  is  the  war  of  1870-1,  at  which 
time  the  German  Army,  after  a  period  of 
laborious  evolution,  reached  a  remarkable 
standard  of  efficiency.  Several  factors  had 
contributed  to  this  result.  In  the  first  place, 
the  traditions  of  the  old  Prussian  Army  had  been 
revived  by  the  study  of  the  Seven  Years'  War. 
In  the  second,  the  traditions  of  the  War  of 
Liberation  and  the  teaching  of  the  school  of 
Bliicher  and  Gneisenau  were  still  living.  In 
the  third,  the  idea  of  viniversal  servic3  intro- 
duced by  Scharnhorst  had  been  carried  to  a 
logical  conclusion.  Th  science  of  leadership, 
built  up  by  a  long  series  of  distinguished 
soldiers,  culminated  in  Moltke,  who  founded  a 
school  of  which  perhaps  the  most  distinguished 
survivor  was  Marshal  von  der  Goltz.  The  great 
"  battle-thinker "  found  apt  pupils  amongst 
the  Prussian  aristocracy,  who  formed  a  military 


caste  steeped  in  the  precepts  of  Clausewitz. 
Full-blooded  manhood  in  Germany  manifested 
itself  in  military  study  and  military  exercises, 
just  as  in  England  at  the  same  period  it  began 
to  manifest  itself  in  athletics.  Among  the 
troops  esprit  de  corps  was  fostered  by  a  real 
territorial  system  by  which  the  men  of  the 
soil  were  gathered  together  in  their  own  dis- 
tricts, and  were  noixrished  and  trained  by  and 
among  the  people  to  whom  they  belonged. 
The  Silesians  formed  one  corps,  the  Pomer- 
anians i  nother ;  the  corps  leader  was  a  sort 
of  military  governor  in  his  own  province  and 
the  autonomy  of  the  corps  was  carried  to  the 
point  of  equipping  the  troops  out  of  local  fiinds. 
The  women  were  no  less  enthusiastic  than 
the  men.  A  sickly  family  "  thinking  of  a 
coming  war  deplore  the .  fact  that  they  will 
have  no  relations  in  the  Army."  The  mechani- 
cal genius  of  Nicholas  Dreyse  produced  the 
first  breech-loading  rifle  which  was  sufficiently 
strong  to  undergo  the  wear  and  tear  of  cam- 
paigning, and  Krupp's  cannon  foundry  yielded 
one  of  the  first  rifled  breech-loading  cannon. 
The  mental  activity  of  officers  found  vent  in 
books  and  pamphlets  of  an  astonishing  variety 
and  excellence,  as,  for  example,"  the  "  Tactical 
Retrospect,"  written  by  a  company  com- 
mander after  the  war  of  1866,  in  which  the 
defects  of  the  Army  as  discovered  during  this 


67 


i. 


68 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


THE  CROWN  PRINCE  OF  BAVARIA. 

[£.  O.  Hoppi. 

brief  campaign  were  fre  ly  exposed.  More 
remarkable  still,  the  thinker  of  the  'sixties 
became  the  man  o  action  in  1870,  avoiding 
the  reproach  so  often  levelled  at  arm-chair 
critics.  Although  since  Waterloo  the  Prussian 
Army  had  rested  on  its  laurels,  it  proved  itself 
a  trustworthy  and  eflficient  instrument  in 
the  hands  of  its  great  strategist.  The  pub- 
lished works  of  Moltke  show  that  he  had  fore- 
cast almost  every  military  situation  that  could 
arise  in  the  case  of  a  quarrel  with  neighbouring 
Powers,  and  his  strategical  conceptions  have 
formed  the  starting  point  of  most  of  the  military 
thought  of  the  past  half  century.  This 
was  very  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  he 
was  the  first  to  grasp  the  potential  effects  of  the 
railway,  the  telegraph,  and  of  modern  arms  on 
the  handling  of  great  armies,  and  the  modifica- 
tions which  these  new  factors  had  rendered 
necessary  or  desirable  in  the  earlier  practice  of 
Napoleon-  The  view  that  his  strategy  was 
based  on  different  principles  to  that  of  the 
Emperor  has  been  strongly  contested  ;  certainly, 
so  far  as  their  practice  was  concerned,  it  would 
be  possible  to  quote  a  good  deal  of  evidence  in 
favour  of  the  opposite  opinion.  That  Moltke 
was  not  afraid  to  adopt  wide  strategic  fronts, 
and  relied  rather  on  envelopment  than  penetra- 
tion of  the  hostile  front  as  the  means  of  victory, 
was  probably  due  more  to  the  practical  changes 
in  the  conditions  than  to  divergencies  of  funda- 
mental theory.  Like  all  great  soldiers  he  was, 
as  the  Germans  say,  a  realist ;  and  as  he  said 
himself,  strategy  is  a  matter  of  "  makeshifts," 
not  of  hard-and-fast  system.    Moltke  was  happy 


in  his  associates,  for  he  had  the  personal  support 
in  the  field  of  King  William,  and  as  a  general  rule 
he  saw  eye  to  eye  with  Bismarck  in  questions  of 
State  policy,  a  necessary  condition  of  all  effective 
strategy.  He  had,  moreover,  at  his  disposal 
that  remarkable  administrator,  Von  Roon,  who 
as  Minister  for  War  kept  ready  sharpened 
the  sword  which  it  was  Moltke's  business  to 
use.  It  was,  indeed,  a  galaxy  of  talent  that  took 
the  field  against  the  French  in  1870  ;  Steinmetz, 
"  the  Uon  of  Nachod,"  Prince  Frederick  Charles, 
and  the  Crown  Prince  of  Saxony  commanded 
armies ;  Blimienthal,  Stiehle,  Sperling,  and 
Stosch  were  the  chiefs  of  the  Army  staffs ;  emd 
amongst  the  corps  leaders  were  Gtoeben  and 
Werder,  both  of  whom  showed  themselves 
capable  of  commanding  armies,  Manteuffel,  who 
had  led  the  Army  of  the  Main  in  1866,  Fraa- 
secky,  the  hero  of  Maslowed,  Constantin  Alvens- 
leben,  who  was  to  immortalize  himself  at  Mars 
la  Tour,  Kirchbach,  who  had  led  the  famous  10th 
Division  at  Nachod,  and  Skalitz,  TiimpUng, 
Zsistrow,  Memstein,  all  well-tried  as  divisional 
commanders  in  1866  ;  the  Bavarian  generals, 
Hartmann  and  Von  der  Tann,  and  two  Prussism 
generals.  Von  Beyer  and  Von  Obemitz,  the 
leaders  of  the  Baden  and  Wurtemberg  inde- 
pendent divisions.  Moltke's  immediate  «n- 
tourage  included  General  von  Podbielski,  who 
served  as  Quartermaster-General,  and  the  three 
"  sous-chefs "  of  staff,  Bronsart,  Verdy  du 
Vemois,  and  Brandenstein ;  and  it  was  said 
that  so  perfect  an  understanding  existed  between 
them  that  if  one  was  suddenly  called  away  while 
drafting  an  Army  order  another  could  take  up 
the  pen  and  finish  the  document  in  the  spirit  of 
its  author.  They  were,  indeed,  a  "  band  of 
brothers."  Major  Blume,  who  afterwards  com- 
manded the  15th  Army  Corps,  was  chief  of  the 
Executive  Department,  and  the  present  com- 
mander of  the  8th  Corps,  von  Biilow,  was  then 
a  captain  on  the  staff.  Of  these  members  of  the 
General  Staff  in  1870  two  became  Ministers  of 
War,  six  were  given  command  of  Army  Corpa 
or  held  the  post  of  Inspector-General,  two 
became  generals,  and  four  became  major- 
generals. 

The  German  Army  had  the  advantage  of 
entering  upon  the  war  of  1870  while  its  experi- 
ences of  war  in  1866  were  still  fresh  ;  the  earlier 
campaign  was,  in  fact,  a  much-needed  prepara- 
tion for  the  later  one.  The  well-known  letters 
of  Prince  Kraft  of  Hohenlohe  enumerate  the  prin- 
cipal changes  that  were  effected  within  four  years 
to  make  good  the  deficiencies  that  had  been 
discovered  in  the  war  against  Austria.  It  waa 
found,  for  example,  that  the  value  of  the  Krupp 
gtm  in   1866  had  been  insufficiently  realized 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


69 


THE  GROWN  PRINCE  OF  GERMANY  IN  THE  UNIFORM  OF  THE  DEATH'S  HEAD  HUSSARS. 

[Ctntral  News. 


through  want  of  tactical  training  among  the 
artillery  officers.  Kraft,  who  was  a  gunner 
himself — he  commanded  the  artillery  of  the 
Prussian  Guard  Corps — is  unsparing  in  his  con- 
demnation of  his  own  arm.  He  says,  "our 
artillery  on  almost  every  occasion  entered  upon 
the  scene  far  too  late  and  with 'far  too  small  a 
lumber  of  guns."  Yet  they  had  gone  into  action 
with  a  feeling  of  absolute  certainty  that  nothing 
could  resist  them,  for  it  was  considered 
that  ten  Prussian  guns  would  overcome  16 
Austrian  guns,  so  superior  were  the 
former  to  the  latter  in  point  of  construction. 
With  regard  to  the  cavalry  it  had  been  found 
that  Napoleon's  practice  had  been  so  far  mis- 
read that  the  mobile  arm  was  kept  in  large 


masses  in  rear  of  the  Army  with  the 
idea  that  it  should  be  carefully  preserved 
with  a  view  to  its  possible  employment 
as  a  reserve  on  the  battlefield,  a  remark 
that  applies  equally  to  the  so-called  reserve 
artillery,  which  absorbed  more  than  half  of 
the  guns  of  the  Army  and  retained  them  a 
day's  march  distant  from  the  battlefield. 
Such  is  the  influence',  of  a  mere  phrase  on  the 
practice  of  war.  The  infantry  alone  escaped 
criticism,  as  indeed  it  might,  since  it  won  the 
decisive  battle.  In  the  words  of  the  official 
history  "  the  infantry  fought  almost  alone."  But 
the  success  of  the  infantry  was  largely  ascribable 
to  the  powerful  influence  brought  to  bear  on  the 
battle  by  the. intelligence  of  the  nation  in  arms. 


70 


THE    TIMES   HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


GENERAL  VON  KLUGK. 

[Record  Press. 

A  striking  instance  of  the  correction  on  the 
battlefield  of  the  errors  of  peace  training  may 
be  mentioned.  Captain  May,  author  of  the 
"  Tactical  Retrospect,"  says :  "When  the 
needle  gun  (breech-loading  rifle)  at  the  com- 
mencement of  the  fifth  yeaj*  of  its  existence 
was  first  generally  issued  to  the  troops,  a 
standing  order,  insisted  on  by  generals  who 
preached  at  .all  inspections  and  parades,  was : 
'  Gentlemen,  throw  out  very  few  skirmishers — 
only  one  section ;  that  is  now  as  efficient  as 
an  old  sub -division  ;  let  all  the  rest  be  kept 
well  in  hand.'  Experience,  however,  soon 
showed  that  the  exact  reverse  of  the|e  theoreti- 
cal rules,  which,  appeared  so  judicious  at  the 
time,  was  the  right  practice.  Above  all  things, 
every  one  sought  to  give  full  effect  to  the 
efficiency  of  his  trustworthy  arm.  Why  should 
they  be  held  back  ?  Why  not  strike  with  the 
full  weight  of  the  weapon  in  their  possession  ? 
Thus  they  all  dissolved  themselves  into  a  swarm 
of  skirmishers,  because  in  that  formation  the 
breech-loader  can  be  best  used,  and  I  ecause  it  was, 
besides,  sufficiently  analogous  to  a  company 
column,  which  often  stood  more  than  ten  deep 
and  fired  from  all  possible-positions.  And  this 
would  take  place  not  so  much  at  the  word  of 
command  of  their  leader  (who  perhaps  could 
only  hear  himself  from  the  deafening  noise  of 
the  guns  and  small  arms)  as  from  a  natural 
consequence  of  the  circumstances  in  which  they 
were  placed." 


The  Army  of  1870,  then,  was  the  finished 
article  which  had  been  proved  in  its  rough 
state  in  the  furnace  of  Sadowa.  1870  showed 
how  greatly  it  had  benefited  by  its  ex- 
perience. The  mobilization  was  carried  out  un- 
distvirbed  by  fears  for  what  the  enemy  might 
do  on  the  frontier.  The  concentration  was 
effected  at  points  which  enabled  the  Supreme 
Command  to  defend  the  whole  of  190  miles 
of  frontier  while  acting  in  a  mass  offensively 
against  the  enemy's  main  army,  and  even  the 
encounters  at  Spicheren  and  Worth  on  August 
6,  which  were  spoken  of  afterwards  as  hors 
d'ceuvres  and  were  said  to  have  ruined  Moltke's 
plan  for  a  great  battle  on  the  right  bank  of  the 
Moselle,  proved  to  be  of  considerable  value 
in  a  tactical  sense  as  enabling  the  troops  to 
test  their  powers  in  non-committal  actions 
against  a  foe  who  was  known  to  be  in  possession 
of  a  superior  fire-arm,  the  Chassepot  The 
manner  in  which  all  units  marched  to  the  soiuid 
of  the  cannon  showed  that  the  value  of  co- 
operation had  been  thcjroughly  realized.  The 
artillery,  determined  to  remove  the  stigma 
that  rested  upon  their  service,  came  into 
action  early  and  in  mass,  and,  where  necessary, 
brought  their  guns  up  into  the  firing  line  to  cope 
with  the  French  rifle  and  thus  cover  the  advance 
of  their  infantry.  The. -German  gxinners  re- 
ceived their  guerdon  when  the  French 
Emperor,  an  artillerist  himself,  remarked  after 
Sedan,  "  In  my  artillery  I  feel  myself  per- 
sonally conquered."  The  cavalry  had  begun  to 
grasp  the  importance  of  its  strategical  mission — 
"  Cavalry  forward  "  was  an  injunction  inscribed 
in  almost  every  telegram  in  the  early  days  of 
August — apart  from  its  use  on  the  battle- 
field ;  and  the  infantry,  now  screened  by  its 
cavalry  and  protected  by  its  artillerj^  never 
hesitated  to  come  to  close  quarters.  The 
higher  leading,  generally  speaking,  was  extra- 
ordinarily successful.  This  was  due  in  the 
first  place  to  Moltke,  in  the  second  to  the 
fatmty  of  the  French  generalship  ;  in  the  third 
to  the  loyalty  with  which  the  different  com- 
manders supported  one  another.  It  is  com- 
paratively rarely  that  we  hear  j  of  friction  be- 
tween commanders  and  staffs,  and  when  it 
occiirred  the  obstructionist  was  quickly  removed, 
as  in  the  case  of  Steinmetz.  In  a  general  way 
harmony  was  preserved  by  the  exercise  of  tact, 
of  which  Verdy  du  Vernois  gives  an  early 
example.  On  Jtily  31  the  Crown  Prince  demurre'^V 
to  an  order  to  advance  on  the  ground  that 
the  Third  Army  was  not  yet  ready  for  the  field. 
A  somewhat  peremptory  telegram  was  about 
to  be  dispatched  from  the  Royal  headquarters 
when  Verdy   du  Vernois  remarked:   "I  knew 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


71 


that  staff  very  well  in  the  last  war.  If  you  wish 
to  create  strained  relations  with  them  during 
the  whole  of  this  campaign  send  it ;  but  I 
ana  perfectly  sure  that  they  will  be  offended, 
and  I  think  not  without  some  cause.  For  a 
good  reason  there  must  surely  be  for  their  not 
yet  fixing  the  date  of  starting."  Moltke  re- 
plied, "  Well,  but  how  are  we  to  manage  it, 
then  ? "  Verdy  then  proposed  that  ho 
should  himself  go  to  the  Crown  Prince's  head- 
quarters and  personally  explain  the  need  for 
immediate  action.  And  accordingly  he  journeyed 
from  May ence  to  Speyer,  and  returned  within  72 
hours  to  say  that  General  von  Bliunenthal, 
who  was  the  Crown  Prince's  Chief  Staff  Officer, 
had  agreed  to  cross  the  frontier  at  Weissenburg 
on  August  4. 

Prxissian  strategy  in  1870  may  be  summed  up 
i  1  four  aphorisms  : — 

(1)  that    errors    in    the    original    assembly    of 

the  Army  can  scarcely  ever  be  rectified 
during  the  course  of  the  campaign ; 

(2)  that  no  plan  of  operations  can  with  safety 

go    beyond    the    first    meeting    with    the 
enemy's   main   army  ; 

(3)  that    the    only    geographical    point    to    be 

considered  is  the  point  where  the  enemy's 
main  army  will  be  found ; 

(4)  that    the    enemy's    main    army    is    to    be 

assailed  wherever  met. 

The  form  of  strategic  attack  generally  used 
by  Moltke  was  that  called  by  some  the  tixming 
movement  and  by  others  strategic  interception. 
Bazaine's  army  was  cut  off  from  Paris  before 
battle  was  delivered  at  Gravelotte  ;  and  Mac- 
mahon's  army  was  completely  surroxmded  before 
it  was  decisively  attacked  at  Sedan.  This  form  of 
strategic  attack  naturally  led  to  that  of  tactical 
envelopment  on  the  battlefield  ;  and  as  in  all 
the  earlier  battles,  except  Mars  la  Tour,  the 
factor  of  numerical  superiority  was  on  the  side 
of  the  Germans,  the  first  condition  of  successful 
enveloping  tactics  was  seciu-ed.  For  a  general 
to  attempt  to  envelop  an  army  equal  in  number 
and  quality  to  his  own  obviously  exposes  his 
over -extended  line  to  the  danger  of  being  broken 
by  the  more  compact  masses  of  the  enemy. 
This  danger  the  Germans  usually  managed  to 
avoid  during  the  campaign  of  Metz  and  Sedan, 
and  later  on,  when  with  armies  inferior  in 
nvimbers  they  had  to  oppose  the  nxomerous  but 
ill -trained  troops  of  the  Republic,  the  superior 
quality  of  their  own  troops  enabled  them^tq 
adopt  breadths  of  front  which  under  other 
circumstances  would  have   proved'  -disastrous. 


GENERAL  VON  HEERINGEN. 

[International  Illustrations. 

The  general  success  of  the  envelopment  in  1870 
did  not  deceive  them  as  to  its  limitations  or  as 
to  the  necessity  of  strong  reserves.  As  Von 
Meckel,  the  future  teacher  of  the  Japanese, 
pointed  out  after  the  war,  "  depth  and  breadth 
of  front  stand  in  opposition  to,  and  mutually 
control,  each  other.  Broad  fronts  have  great 
strength  at  the  commencement  of  an  action, 
but  depth  alone  secures  its  being  thoroughly 
carried  out.  ...  It  is  a  common  fault  to  under- 
value the  waste  and  the  necessity  of  feeding  [the 
front  line]  in  a  battle  .  .  .  and  on  many 
occasions  during  the  last  war  we  stood  for  hoiirs 
on  the  brink  of  disaster,  all  our  forces  being 
used  up  .  .  .  The  greatest  opponent  of  a 
judicioiis  relation  between  depth  and  breadth 
is  the  desire  to  outflank.  Though  this  is  innate 
in  all  minds  it  must  be  combated." 

A  notable  change  was  evident  in  the  minor 
tactics  of  infantry.  The  tendency  to  dis- 
persion which  in  1866  startled  the  Priissian 
leaders  as  an  unauthorized  improvisation 
calculated  to  deprive  the  company  commander 
of  the  force  necessary  to  execute  the  assault 
had  in  1870  been  accepted  as  inevitable  and 
the  cry  had  arisen  to  "  organize  disorder," 
in  other  words,  to  methodize  a  form  of  tactics 
which,  strictly  considered,  was  no  form  at 
all.  That  it  had  the  advantage  of  decreasing 
loss  in  a  series  of  battles  in  which  for  the 
first'  time  both  sides  were  armed  with  breech- 


72 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAB. 


GENERAL  VON   FALKENHAYN, 
Prussian  Minister  of  War. 

[Central  N*v>s. 

loading  rifles  was  evident,  but  it  was  accompanied 
by  a  drawback  until  then  unheard  of,  which 
was  only  revealed  to  the  world  by  independent 
writers  after  the  war,  as,  for  example,  the  author 
of  the  famous  "  Summer  Night's  Dream." 
The  example  to  which  the  writer,.  Meckel, 
called  attention  was  that  of  Gravelotte,  where, 
according  to  the  Official  History,  43  com- 
panies of  different  regiments  were  at  one  and 
the  same  time  in  the  Auberge  of  St.  Hubert. 
"  You  have  seen  the  farmhouse  and  know  the 
building  is  scarcely  large  enough  to  contain  a 
single  company  on  war  strength,  especially  when 
you  remember  that  the  low  garden  was  com- 
manded from  Moscow  farm  and  under  a  heavy 
fire.  Forty -three  companies  are  more  than  10,000 
men.  Where  were  the  9,800  men  who  had  no 
room  ?  "  The  explanation  he  gives  is  that  "  this 
epidemic  of  withdrawing  from  the  battle  begins 
with  the  game  and  spreading  with  pestilential 
rapidity  rages  over  the  battlefield  like  a  fever." 
The  writer  emphatically  declares  that  at  his  first 
battle  in  France,  on  reaching  the  scene  late  in 
the  day,  "  the  field  was  literally  strewed  with 
men  who  had  left  the  rariks  and  were  doing 
nothing.  Whole  battalions  could  have  been 
formed  from  them.  From  where  we  stood  you 
could  count  hundreds.  Some  were  lying  down, 
their  rifles  pointing  to  the  front  as  if  they  were 
still  in  the  firing  line  and  were  expecting  the 
enemy  to  attack  them  at  euiy  moment.    These 


had  evidently  remained  behind  lying  down 
when  the  more  courageous  had  advanced.  Others 
had  squatted  like  hares  in  the  furrows.  Wherever 
a  bush  or  ditch  gave  shelter  there  were  men  to  be 
seen, who  in  some  cases  had  made  themselves  very 
comfortable."  In ^ short,  this  kind  of  straggling 
was  the  consequence  of  teaching  men  to  take 
cover  in  attack.  "  In  dispersion  it  is  difficult  to 
be  steadfast,  in  close  order  it  is  difficult  to  be 
weak.  Under  the  leader's  influence  the  ex- 
ample of  the  strong  impels  the  whole.  Among 
the  leaderless  the  example  of  the  confused  and 
the  cowards  has  the  upper  hand."  Moreover, 
the  vice  of  "  extended  order,"  as  Meckel  con- 
ceived it  to  be,  produced  another  phenomenon, 
namely,  "  the  effort  of  the  lieutenant  to  release 
himself  from  company  ties,  and  the  similar 
effort  of  his  captain  to  release  himself  from 
battalion  ties,  in  order  to  seek  opportunities  of 
distinction  by  individual  acts  of  heroism." 

In  these  excerpts,  as  the  reader  will  perceive, 
are  raised  many  of  those  burning  questions 
with  which  the  British  Army  became  famiUar 
in  the  course  of  the  South  African  War,  and  the 
solution  of  which  was  attempted  in  Manchuria  in 
1904-5  and  in  Eiirope  in  1914.  Without  pro- 
posing to  enter  upon  the  later  developments  of 
the  German  tactical  school,  it  is  worth  noticing 
here  that  as  the  war  of  1870  proceeded  there 
was  a  tendency  to  abandon  the  closer  order  of 
battle  and  to  fight  in  more  extended  formations. 
How  far  this  was  due  to  the  general  natiire  of 
the  operations,  how  far  to  the  diminished  capa- 
city of  the  French  troops,  how  far  to  the  growing 
experience  and  confidence  of  the  Germans  them- 
selves cannot  be  discussed  here.  But  there  is  no 
doubt  that  in  the  concluding  period  of  the  war 
the  German  infantrymen  had  learnt  to  fight 
effectively  and  with  far  less  loss  to  themselves  in 
comparatively  open  order. 

The  army  that  recrossed  the  frontier  in  the 
spring  of  1871,  now  truly  a  German  Army,  had 
on  the  whole  vindicated  the  principles  on  which 
it  had  been  formed  and  led.  In  spite  of  the 
friction  which  from  different  causes  had  arisen 
between  some  of  its  component  parts,  they  had 
shared  the  same  experiences  and  were  therefore 
likely  to  respond  to  the  same  teaching.  The 
war  had  prepared  the  way  not  merely  to  politi- 
cal but  to  military  vmity.  The  road  to  Prussian 
hegemony  in  soldiership  as  well  as  in  statesman- 
ship had  been  opened,  and  when  the  Army  again 
entered  the  field  it  was  to  demonstrate  the 
thoroughness  with  which  the  consolidation  had 
been  effected.  We  now  propose  to  sketch  the 
developments  which  the  German  military 
system  underwent  in  the  period  between  1871 
and  1914. 


TEE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


73 


The  great  -  purpose  pursued  by  Bismarck 
was  the  unification  of  Germany  and  the  founda- 
tion of  a  German  Empire  under  the  lead  and 
control  of  Prussia.  He  attained  his  end  by  the 
wars  of  1864,  1866,  and  1870.  The  results  were 
then  put  on  paper  in  the  shape  of  a  "  Constitu- 
tion of  the  German  Empire,"  which  became 
law  in  the  spring  of  1871.  This  Constitution 
laid  down  the  main  principles  of  military  organi- 
zation, and  was  supplemented,  as  regarded  the 
relations  between  the  most  important  of  the 
German  States,  by  military  conventions  con- 
cluded by  Prussia  with  Bavaria,  Saxony,  and 
Wurtemberg. 

It  was  laid  down  in  the  Constitution  that  every 
German  capable  of  bearing  arms  belonged  for 
seven  years — in  principle  from  the  end  of  his 
20th  to  the  beginning  of  his  28th  year — to  the 
active  Army.  He  was  to  pass  three  years  with 
the  colours  and  four  in  the  reserve,  and  then,  for 
five  more  years,  belong  to  the  Landwehr.  From 
the  end  of  1871  the  pea,ce  strength  of  the  Army 
was  fixed  at  one  per  cent,  of  the  population, 
which  was  then  just  over  41,000,000. 

The  whole  military  forces  were  placed  under 
the  control  of  the  Emperor,  subject  only  to  the 
measure  of  military  independence  preserved  to 
some  of  the  States  in  peace  time.  Even  in 
Bavaria  the  Emperor  was  to  have  in  peace  time 
a  right  of  inspection,  involving  the  responsibility 


for  efficiency  of  the  forces.  In  war  he  became 
altogether  supreme.  Bavaria  retained  her  own 
military  organization  and  administration,  and 
her  "  contingent  "  consisted  of  two  Army  Corps, 
which  were  called,  as  hitherto,  the  I.  Bavarian 
Corps  and  the  II.  Bavarian  Corps.  Saxony  re- 
tained some  autonomy  in  that  she  had  a  Minis- 
try of  War  (but  not  a  General  Staff)  of  her  own, 
and,  as  in  1870,  gave  her  name  to  an  Army  Corps 
(the  XII.).  Wurtemberg  had  much  the  same 
rights -as  Saxony  and  provided  the  XIII.  Army 
Corps.  Baden,  with  no  special  rights,  provided 
the  troops  of  the  XIV.  Army  Corps.  Some  other 
units  were  given  a  territorial  character — for 
example,  the  25th  Hessian  division. 

The  whole  peace  strength  of  Germany, 
after  the  French  war,  was  one  per  cent,  of  a 
population  of  41,000,000.  It  was  actually 
fixed  by  a  Law  of  1874,  for  the  period  from 
January,  1875,  to  December,  1881,  at  401,659 
non-commissioned  officers  and  men.  There 
were  18  Army  Corps — the  Prussian  Guard 
Corps,  11  Prussian  Army  Corps,  the  XII. 
(Saxony),  the  XIII.  (Wurtemberg),  the  XIV. 
(Baden),  the  XV.  (Alsace-Lorraine),  and  the 
I.  and  II.  Bavarian.  These  18  Army  Corps 
comprised  469  battalions  of  infantry,  465 
squadrons  of  cavalry,  300  batteries  of  field 
artillery,  29  battalions  of  garrison  artillery, 
18  engineer  battalions,  and  18  train  battaUons. 


THE  JULIUS  TOWER,  SPANDAU,  WHERE  THE  GERMAN  WAR  CHEST  WAS    STORED. 

[Undtncood  &  Underwood. 


74r 


THE    TIMES   HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GENERAL  VON  EMMIGH. 

lC«ntral  Ntws. 

The  number  of  officers,  as  well  as  of  officials  of 
all  sorts,  was  not  fixed  by  law,  but  decided, 
annually  in  the  Budget. 

In  1880  began  the  long  series  of  in- 
creases, justified  partly  by  the  constitutional 
principle  that  the  peace  strength  should  be  one 
per  cent,  of  the  population,  but  mainly  by . 
pohtical  considerations  and  the  alleged  strength 
of  other  countries.  All  the  official  explanations  of 
later  increases  were,  indeed,  variations  of  the 
explanation  given  of  the  Bill  of  1880  : — 

Since  1874  considerable  military  reforms  have  been 
carried  out  in  other  States.  These  reforms  are  of 
capital  importance  for  Germany.  Bounded  along  an 
immense  frontier  by  three  great  Powers  and  four 
smaller  Powers,  and  accessible  from  the  sea  along  a 
great  stretch  of  coast,  Germany  must  be  constantly 
ready  to  defend  her  liberty  and  her  seciirity.  It  is 
absolutely  necessary  to  increase  the  effectives  and  the 
number  of  units,  unless  we  want  the  efforts  made  in 
time  of  peace  to  be  rendered  fruitless  in  time  of  war 
because  of  the  numerical  superiority  and  sounder 
organization  which  our  enemies  could  set  against  us. 

So  the  peace  strength  was  raised,  for  the  period 
1881-1888,  from  401,659  to  427,274,  by  the 
increase  of  the  infantry  from  469  battalions  to 
503,  of  the  field  artillery  from  300  batteries  to 
340,  of  the  garrison 'artillery  from  29  batteries 
to- 31,  and  of  the  engineers  from  18  battaUons 
to  19.  It  was  also  decided  to  give  some  annual 
training  to  part  of  the  so-called  Ersatz  Reserve, 
which  consisted  of  men  who  by  good  fortune  or 
for  some  slight  physical  reason  escaped  their 
miUtary  service,  but  were  Uable  to  be  called  up  in 
•the  event  of  mobilization.    About  20,000  or 


30,000  a  year  of  these  men  were  thus  trained 
until  1893,  when  the  training  of  the  Ersatz 
Reserve  was  almost  entirely  abolished. 

In  1886,  two  years  before  the  completion  of 
the  period  covered  by  the  Law  of  1880,  the 
Government  proposed  fresh  increases,  calling 
attention  once  more  to  the  increased  strength  of 
France  and  Russia  and  other  neighbouring 
States.  The  Empire,  "  the  child  of  a  glorious 
war,"  must  again  be  put  in  a  position  to  enforce 
its  policy  when  "  the  day  arrived  of  the  menetce 
of  an  European  conflict."  Bismarck  was  at  the 
time  engaged  in  a  fierce  conflict  with  the  German 
Catholic  Party,  and  dissolved  the  Reichstag  on 
account  of  its  opposition  to  the  new  increases. 
After  the  elections  the  Law  was  passed  in  1887. 
It  increased  the  peeice  strength  of  the  Army,  for 
the  period  from  1887  to  1894,  from  427,274  to 
468,409,  the  infantry  being  increased  from 
503  battalions  to  534,  and  the  field  artillery  from 
340  batteries  to  364,  the  strength  of  the  other 
arms  remaining  unchanged. 

In  1890  the  number  of  Army  Corps  was  raised 
from  18  to  20  by  the  formation  of  the  XVI. 
Army  Corps  in  Lorraine  and  of  the  XVII.  Army 
Corps  on  the  eastern  frontier,  and  a  few  months 
later  the  peace  strength  was  again  increased, 
for  the  period  from  1890  until  1894,  from  468,409 
to  486,983,  The  infantry  was  increased  from 
534  battalions  to  538,  the  field  artillery  from 
364  batteries  to  434,  the  engineers  from  19 
battalions  to  20,  and  the  train  from  18  batta- 
Uons to  21. 

In  1893  came  far  more  important  changes, 
effected  again  only  after  a  ParUamentary  con- 
flict and  a  dissolution  of  the  Reichstag.  The 
Government  announced,  once  more  with  special 
reference  to  both  France  and  Russia,  that 
the ,  gradual  increases  of  the  peace  strength 
were  no  longer  sufficient.  The  Empire  =must 
proceed  "  to  utilize  to  the  full  all  its  resources 
in  men."     The-  Government  said  : — 

We  .must  adopt  an  organization  involving  the  em- 
plqyment  of  all  the  men  really  fit  for  service.  Only 
then  shall  we  be  able  to  face  calmly  the  possibility  of 
an  attack.  The  syst«m  which  consists  in  slow  and 
steady  progress  must  now  be  abandoned  and  give 
way  to  the  immediate  application  of  the  principles 
upon  which  our  military  constitution  rests.  This 
application  of  principles  will  be  pushed  as  far  as 
the  economic  and  financial  resources  of  the  Empire 
allow. 

It  was  found  impossible  for  the  present  to 
increase  the  number  of  Army  Corps.  The 
increase  in  the  number  of  men  taken  up  im- 
pUed,  therefore,  some  shortening  of  service 
with  the  colours,  and  colour  service  was  to  be 
reduced  from  three  years  to  two  with  all  arms 
except  cavalry  and  horse  artillery.  The 
peace  strength  of  the  Army  waa  increased  from 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


75 


ss 

■n 

^^^K^i^^^H 

1 

■ 

^ — Iri'i — B 

HH 

^■'^x<H 

1 

^HBh^K^I 

ff 

^^^m 

^^^KM/^^/^l^lm 

i 

flHEmuU 

W^^Vr 

^f  )*^f  >  ^  . '  W 

ljA<^J^'»*^- 

A 

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1 

*^.jHJi^s^^ 

GERMAN    INFANTRY    MARCHING    THROUGH    BERLIN. 


486,983  to  557,193.  But  the  main  effect  of 
the  reorganization  was  that  the  Army  was  pre- 
pared to  mobilize  with  a  larger  number  of 
young  and  well-trained  men,  the  total  being 
estimated  at  4,300,000. 

In  1899  the  Government  was  again  alarmed 
by  the  progress  of  France  and  Russia,  and 
found  a  fresh  argument  in  the  Spanish- American 
War,  which  had  "  proved  with  terrifying 
clearness  what  a  price  has  to  be  paid  for  lack  of 
regular  preparation  for  war  in  time  of  peace." 
The  number  of  Army  Corps  was  now  increased 
from  20  to  23,  by  the  foi-mation  of  the  XVIII. 
Army  Corps  at  Frankfurt-on-the-Main,  theXTX. 
(2nd  Saxon)  Army  Corps,  and  a  III.  Bavarian 
Army  Corps.  The  peace  strength  of  the  Army 
was  increased  by  16,000  men,  apart  from 
non-commissioned  officers.  The  23  Army  Corps 
now  comprised  625  battalions  of  infantry, 
482  squadrons  of  cavalry,  574  batteries  of 
field  artillery,  38  battalions  of  garrison  artillery, 
26  battaUons  of  engineers,  11  battaUons  of 
communication  troops,  and  23  battahons  of 
train. 

In  1905  there  was  a  further  increase  of  the 
peace  strength  by  10,000  men,  together  with  an 
improvement  of  the  provisions  for  the  training  of 
the  reserves.  There  was  a  similar  increase  of 
the  peace  strength  in  1911,  and  great  technical 
improvements  were  effected,  especially  by 
the  creation  of  machine  gun  companies  and  by 
a  large  increase  of  expenditure  on  instruction. 
The  internal  pohtical  situation  was  not  then 
favourable  for  the  Government,  and  it  needed 
the  Morocco  crisis  of  1911  to  give  full  Uberty 
to  the  appetites  of  the  mihtary  authorities. 
Even  then  they  were  somewhat  hampered  by 
the  competition  of  the  naval  authorities ;    and 


[Central  News. 

there  was  open  strife  for  a  time  between  the 
then  Prussian  Minister  of  War,  General  von 
Heeringen,  and  the  Secretary  of  State  for  the 
Imperial  Navy. 

There  was  a  general  election  in  Germany  at 
the  beginning  of  1912,  and  the  Government 
announced  that  it  was  necessary  to  have  a 
Reichstag  "  ready  to  maintain  the  Army  and 
Navy  in  a  perfect  state  of  preparation  and  to 
fill  up  the  gaps  in  Germany's*  armaments." 
Although  the  elections  resulted  in  tremendous 
Socialist  victories,  and  the  Imperial  Minister 
of  Finance,  Herr  Wermuth,  resigned  office,  the 


FIELD-MARSHAL  VON  DER  GOLTZ, 


> 


76 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


OFFICERS     OF    THE    DEATH'S    HEAD    HUSSARS. 
The  Crown   Prince  in   the  Centre. 


military  increases  were  obtained.  The  Law  of 
1912  raised  the  peace  strength  of  the  Army  to 
544,211,  and  the  number  of  Army  Corps  was 
increased  from  23  to  25  by  the  creation  of  the 
XX.  Army  Corps  for  the  eastern  frontier 
(Allenstein)  and  of  the  XXI.  Army  Corps  for  the 
western  frontier  (Saarbriicken).  It  was  decided 
that  the  most  important  provisions  of  the  Law 
of  1911,  as  well  as  of  the  new  Law,  should  be 
carried  out  immediately,  instead  of  being 
spread  over  the  period  until  1915.  The  Law 
involved  a  considerable  reorganization  and  re- 
distribution on  both  frontiers.  It  increased 
enormously  the  readiness  of  the  Army  for  war, 
and  was  the  greatest  effort  naade  by  Germany 
since  1870.  As  regards  numbers,  the  total  peace 
strength  became  approximately  723,000,  all 
ranks  included,  that  is  to  say,  544,000 
privates,  30,000  oflficers,  95,000  non-commis- 
sioned officers,  14,000  one-year  volunteers, 
and  40,000  officers  and  others  of  the  admini- 
strative cadre. 

Nevertheless,  the  Law  of  1912  was  hardly  in 
force  before  fresh  increases  began  to  be  de- 
manded and  predicted.  The  inspired  news- 
papers pretended  to  castigate  the  military 
authorities  for  their  slowness,  and  the  Emperor 
delivered  a  speech  referring  to  the  "  thorough 
application  of  the  principle  of  obligatory 
service."  The  new  Bill  itself  very  soon  appeared. 
It  proposed  the  increase  of  the  peace  strength 
from  544,211  to  661,176  privates,  and  the 
addition  of  4,000  officers,  15,000  non-commis- 
sioned officers,  and  27,000  horses.     Adding  the 


administrative  cadre  and  18,000  one-year 
volunteers  the  total  peace  strength  was  raised  to 
about  870,000  men.  Most  of  the  increase  was 
to  be  effected  immediately,  although  the  Bill 
covered  a  period  of  three  years.  The  nunaber  of 
Army  Corps  remained  25,  but  the  various  arms 
were  ultimately  to  be  raised  "to  totals  of  669 
battalions  of  infantry,  550  squadrons  of  cavalry. 
633  batteries  of  field  artillery,  55  battalions  of 
gairison  artillery,  44  battalions  of  engineers,  31 
battalions  of  communication  troops,  and  26 
battalions  of  the  train.  We  are  dealing  here 
only  with  peace  strengths,  but  the  ultimate 
effect  of  the  Law  of  1913  and  its  predecessors 
would  have  been,  after  the  lapse  of  24  years, 
to  provide  Germany  with  a  fully  trained 
reserve  of  5,400,000  men.  The  Imperial 
Chancellor,  in  introducing  the  Bill  in  the 
Reichstag,  said : — 

The  directing  thought  of  the  Bill  is  the  adoption 
of  military  service  for  all,  according  to  the  resources 
of  the  population.  In  round  numl)ers  we  must 
incorporate  63,000  more  men  annually.  Their  in- 
corporation must,  above  everything,  serve  to  raise 
the  strength  of  certain  troops.  This  increase  of  the 
strength  of  units  will  render  mobilization  more 
rapid,  will  facilitate  the  transition  from  peace  to 
war  footing,  will  give  us  younger  reservists  on  mobili- 
zation, and  will  augment  their  number. 

The  Law  was  passed  in  June,  1913,  together 

with  the  extraordinary  financial  "  levy."  which 

was  mentioned  in  a  previous  chapter  of  this  work. 

The  great  increase  of  niimbers  allowed  battalions, 

batteries,  and  cavalry  regiments  to  be  raised 

to  such  a  high  establishment  that  not  more 

than  one  or  two  classes  of  the  Reserve  would  be 


THE    TIMES  HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


77 


required   to   mobilize   the   first   line.      Hence, 

the    quality  of     the     active      Army    and     its 

training   in   peace  was  improved,  mobilization 

was     accelerated,     and    the     covering    troops 

on   the    frontiers    were    made   strong   enough 

to   take  the   field  and   deal   a    blow     against 

an     unprepared     enemy   without    waiting   for 

reservists    from    the   interior.     Although  little 

definite     information      was      forthcoming,    it 

was  evident  that  the  number  of  units    :>i  the 

German  covering  troops    and    their  effectives, 

whose  business  it  is  to  protect  the  mobilization 

and    concentration  of    the    mainvarmies,    was 

to  be  largely  increased.    All  German  troops  had 

increased   strengths   under   the   new  Law,  but 

the   troops   of    11    corps — six   on    the   French 

frontier   and    five   on    the   Russian   frontier — 

had  a  higher  establishment  than  the  rest.     One 

marked     feature     of     the     new     plans      was 

the  strengthening  of  fortified  places,  especially 

Konigsberg  and  Graudenz  in  the  east. 

Judging  the  Law  of  1913  as  a  whole  just  after 

it  had  been  passed,  the  Military  Correspondent 

of  The  Times  made  the  following  very  acciirate 

estimate : — 

There  is  no  evidence  of  any  marked  change  in  the 
principles  which  have  hitherto  guided  German 
military  administrators,  nor  in  the  strategical  tise  of 
the  great  Army  which  has  been  fashioned  with  such 
splendid  continuity  of  pm-pose  during  the  past  40 
years.  There  is  still  the  underlying  design,  academic 
though  at  present  it  be,  to  crush  France  by  a  vigorous 
offensive  before  the  weight  of  Russia  can  be  brought 
to  bear.  There  is  still  a  very  plain  temptation  on 
military  grounds  to  traverse  neutral  States  in  an 
offensive  campaign  against  France.  There  is  still 
the  obvious  intention  to  fight  a  defensive  campaign 
at  Qrst  against  Russia,  and  this  intention  is  made 
more  manifest  by  the  plans  for  improving  the  fortresses 


THE  KAISER  IN  UHLAN  UNIFORM. 

{Record  Puss. 


A  TROOPER  OF  THE  DEATH'S 
HEAD  HUSSARS. 

[Newspaper  Illustrations. 

in  East  Prussia.  The  determination  to  wage  offensive 
war  with  the  utmost  energy  and  ruthlessness  remains 
to-day  as  always  the  central  idea  of  the  German 
strategist,  and  the  main  effect  of  the  new  naval 
and  military  laws  is  to  second  offensive  policy  by 
placing  in  the  hands  of  German  diplomacy  a  weapon 
fashioned  for  offensive  war. 

We  have  seen  that,  by  the  terms  of  the 
Imperial  Constitution,  every  German  capable  of 
bearing  arms  was  rendered  liable  to  three  years' 
service  with  the  colours  and  four  years'  service 
in  the  Reserve,  followed  by  five  years  in  the 
Landwehr.  We  have  seen  also  that,  by  the 
Constitution,  the  peace  strength  of  the  Army 
was  fixed  at  one  per  cent,  of  the  population,  and 
that,  by  a  series  of  Army  Laws,  the  German 
Army  between  1870  and  1913  kept  pace  with 
the  growth  of  the  population  from  41,000,000, 
just  after  the  Franco -German  War,  to  the  total 
of  nearly  65,000,000  shown  by  the  census  taken 
at  the  end  of  1910.  We  must  now  consider 
in  more  detail  the  appUcation  of  the  principle 
of  national  service. 

Liability  to  military  service  began  at  the  age 
of  17  and  ended  at  the  age  of  45.  Liability  to 
active  service  began  at  the  age  of  20.  The 
normal  military,  record  of  a  German  citizen, 
recruited  for  the  infantry,  was  as  follows : — 
He  joined  the  colours  at  the  age  of  20  and 
remained  in  them  for  two  years.  He  then  joined 
the  reserve  of  the  active  forces  for  approxi- 
mately five-and-a-half  years,  being  called  up  for 
periodical  trainings.  He  then  belonged  to  the 
First  Ban  of  the  Landwehr  for  five  years,  and 
to  the  Second  Ban  of  the  Landwehr  for  six  years. 
While  in  the  First  Ban  he  was  liable  to  be  called 
up  twice  for  training  of  a  week  or  fortnight. 


78 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


In  the  Second  Ban  of  the  Landwehr  he  was  not 
liable  to  training  but  could  volunteer  for  train- 
ing. Leaving  the  Landwehr  at  the  age  of  39, 
he  was  enrolled  in  the  Second  Ban  of  the  Land- 
sturm  until  the  end  of  his  45th  year.  In  the 
cavalry  and  horse  artillery  the  period  of  active 
service  was  three  years  instead  of  two,  followed 
by  only  about  fovir-and-a-half  years  in  the 
reserve  of  the  active  Army,  only  three  years  in 
the  First  Ban  of  the  Landwehr,  and,  finally, 
eight  years,  instead  of  six,  in  the  Second  Ban 
of  the  Landwehr. 

The  development  of  this  system,  which  was 
very  different  from  the  original  idea  of  universal 
and  imiform  service  of  three  years  with  the 
colours,  four  years  in  the  active  Reserve,  and  five 
ye  ITS  in  the  Landwehr,  was  marked  by  the 
following  stages  : — In  1888  it  was  observed  that 
Germany,  with  the  12  years'  service  system,  had 
only  12  classes  to  set  against  the  20  classes  of 
France  and  the  15  classes  of  Russia.  It  was 
therefore  considered  necessary  to  increase  the 
number  of  men  available  in  the  event  of  mobUi- 
zation  by  using  a  part  of  the  Landwehr  in  the 
reserve  formation.  It  was  accordingly  decided  to 
lengthen  the  period  of  service  with  the  colours,  in 
the  active  Reserve  and  in  the  Landwehr  from 
12  to  19  years,  to  re-establish  a  Second  Ban  of 


the  Landwehr,  and  to  lengthen  the  period  of 
service  in  the  Landsturm  by  three  years.  In 
this  way  service  with  the  colours,  in  the  active 
Reserve,  and  in  the  Landwehr  ended  at  the  age 
of  39,  instead  of  at  the  age  of  32  :  and  the 
liability  to  service  ceased  at  the  age  of  45,  in- 
stead of  at  the  age  of  42. 

In  1893  came  the  reduction  of  service  with  the 
colours  from  three  years  to  two,  except  in  the 
cavalry  and  horse  artillery.  We  have  explained 
that  the  main  effect  of  the  Law  of  1893  was  to  en- 
able the  Army  to  mobUize  with  a  larger  nimiber 
of  yoimg  and  well-  trained  men.  There  was  in  this 
no  intention  whatever  to  reduce  the  burden 
of  military  service,  and  all  efforts  to  do  so 
were  throughout  resisted  with  the  utmost 
energy.  Again  and  again  in  the  following  years 
the  Socialist  Party  in  the  Reichstag  attempted 
without  the  least  success  to  get  service  in  the 
cavalry  reduced  from  three  years  to  two.  The 
only  purpose  of  the  reduction  of  the  period  of 
colour  service  of  unmounted  troops  was  to 
secure  the  training  of  a  far  larger  proportion 
of  the  population.  Although  there  was  an 
annual  available  contingent  of  about  465,000 
men,  it  was  not  possible,  under  the  system  of 
universal  three  years'  service,  to  take  up  more 
than  from  175,000  to  178,000.     The  remainder 


THE  ALEXANDER  GRENADIER  GUARD  REGIMENT,  OF  WHICH  THE  TSAR  WAS 
COLONEL.  THE  TSAR  AND  THE  KAISER  IN  THE  FOREGROUND. 

iSport  &  Gtutral. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


79 


were  left  at  home  or  subjected  to  a  short  training 
of  little  military  value.  The  authors  of  the 
Law  of  1893  calculated  that,  with  shortened 
service,  there  would  be  about  229,000  instead 
of  175,000  recruits  a  year,  and  that  the  ulti- 
mate result  would  be  24  classes  of  trained  men, 
making  a  total  of  about  4,300,000.  The 
ultimate  effect  of  the  Law  of  1913  would  have 
been,  as  already  stated,  to  increase  this  number 
to   5,400,000. 

So  much  for  the  increase  in  the  number  of 
trained  men.  Almost  as  much  importance 
was  attached  to  the  consequent  lowering  of 
age  of  the  troops  destined  to  form  the  main 
field  armies.  The  war  of  1870  had  shown 
grave  defects  in  the  troops  of  the  Landwehr — 
lack  of  physical  and  moral  force  under  great 
strain,  a  large  proportion  of  sick,  and  insuffi- 
cient vigour  in  attack  and  stubbornness  in 
defence.  The  annual  contingents  being  in- 
creased, it  became  less  necessary  to  call  up 
the  older  men.  If,  for  instance,  on  the  three 
years'  system,  it  had  been  necessary  to  fill  the 
reserves  of  the  field  armies  with  men  from  the 
oldest  class  of  the  First  Ban  of  the  Landwehr, 
men  of  from  32  to  33  years  of  age,  these  same 
places  would  in  future  be  taken  by  men  from 
25  to  28  years  of  age.  Where  it  had  previously 
been  necessary  to  go  back  to  the  13th  class, 
it  would  in  future  be  necessary  to  employ  only 
8  classes. 

We  have  spoken  hitherto  of  the  normal 
case  of  the  recruit  taken  up  at  the  age  of  20 
and  passing  through  all  the  normal  stages 
to  exemption  from  service  at  the  age  of  45. 
At  no  time,  however,  did  the  numbers 
recruited  exhaust  all  the  available  re- 
sources. There  were  considerable  numbers  of 
men  who  obtained  total  or  temporary  exemption 
from  service — apart  from  the  exclusion  from 
the  Army  of  common  criminals  and  of  men  who 
remained  totally  unfit  for  five  years  after  the 
commencement  of  their  legal  obligation  to 
military  service.  The  main  causes  of  exemption 
were,  of  course,  physical,  but  there  was  a  large 
measure  of  consideration  for  men  with  peculiar 
family  or  business  ties,  as  well  as  for  men 
destined  for  careers  in  which  they  would  be 
seriously  handicapped  by  the  interruption  of 
their  studies  for  the  purpose  of  military  service. 
Upon  the  whole,  however,  there  was  very  little 
disposition  to  avoid  military  training,  even  in 
cases  where  exemption  could  be  obtained. 

The  untrained  men  of  the  German  Army 
belonged  to  the  Ersatz  Reserve  or  the  First 
Ban  of  the  Landsturm.  The  Ersatz  Reserve 
consisted,  first,  of  men  who  were  liable  and  fit 
Cor  service  but  who,  owing  to  the  excess  of  the 


DUKE  ALBRECHT  OF  WURTEMBERG. 

{Centred  News. 

supply  of  recruits,  had  not  been  embodied  by 
the  age  of  23  ;  secondly,  of  the  various  classes 
of  men  who  for  one  reason  or  another  had  been 
allowed  to  postpone  their  military  service ; 
and,  thirdly,  of  men  suffering  from  slight 
physical  defects,  but  regarded  as  "  moderately 
fit  "  for  service.  The  importance  of  the  Ersatz 
Reserve  lay  in  the  fact  that  upon  it  in  a  large 
degree  depended  the  filling  up  of  the  depots 
after  the  active  and  reserve  units  of  the  field 
armies  had  been  mobilised  ;  upon  these  depots 
formed  of  cadres  from  the  active  army,  the 
Ersatz,  and  the  annual  contingent  of  recruits, 
depended  the  replacing  of  casualties  in  the  fight- 
ing formations.  The  First  Ban  of  the  Land- 
sturm consisted  (1)  of  all  boys  over  17  years  of 
age  who  had  not  begun  their  military  service  ; 
(2)  of  young  men  who  were  permanently  unfit 
for  service  in  the  field,  but  who  could  be  used 
as  workmen  or  for  purposes  for  which  their 
ordinary  occupations  specially  fitted  them  ; 
and  (3)  of  young  men  who  would  have  been  em- 
bodied in  the  Ersatz  Reserve,  but  were  rejected 
owing  to  excess  of  nimibers. 

Over  and  above  the  ordinary  troops  thus 
recruited  and  distributed  there  was  the  very 
important  class  (in  1913  about  18,000)  of  so- 
called  one-year  volunteers  (Einjahrige).  They 
consisted  of  practically  all  the  sons  of  well- 


80 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GENERAL    ULRIGH    VON    BULOW. 

to-do  classes,  who  had  had  a  Gymnasium  educa- 
tion and  had  passed  the  examination 
on  leaving  school  which  was  the  one 
and  only  certificate  of  aptitude  for 
the  University  and  subsequently  for  any 
of  the  superior  branches  of  Government 
service.  Armed  with  this  certificate  and  with 
sufficient  means  to  provide  their  own  food  and 
equipment,  they  were  allowed  to  serve  in  the 
Army  for  one  year  only,  and  enjoyed  great 
privileges  during  the  period  of  their  service. 
They  could  choose  their  own  year  of  service 
up  to  the  age  of'  23,  or,  for  any  reasonable 
cause  of  delay,  up  to  the  age  of  26  or  27.  They 
could  select,  moreover,  the  arm,  and  in  many 
cases  the  regiment,  which  they  wished  to  join. 
They  formed,  afterwards,  the  main  source  of 
supply  of  officers  and  non-commissioned  officers 
of  the  Keserve. 

The  number  of  non-commissioned  officers  in 
1914  was  about  100,000.  As  in  almost  all  other 
German  walks  of  life,  they  bore  a  great  variety  of 
titles,  but  they  could  be  divided  for  practical 
purposes  into  a  superior  class  and  an  inferior — 
the  Feldwebel,  or  sergeant-major,  and  the 
Vizefeldwebel,  who  wore  swords  with  the 
officer's  knot,  and  the  Sergeant  and  simple 
Unteroffizier,  who  had  not  this  distinction.  The 
great  majority  of  the  non-commissioned  officers 
rose  from  the  ranks,  and  were  either  men  who 
had  volunteered  at  the  age  of  17  or  had  re- 
engaged at  the  end  of  their  two  or  three  years  of 


military  service.  Men  with  any  special  aptitude, 
who  during  their  service  showed  an  inclination 
to  rejoin,  were  given  special  instruction  for 
the  duties  of  non-conunissioned  officers.  A 
minority — perhaps  one-quarter — of  the  non- 
commissioned officers  came  from  special  schools, 
which  were  of  two  kinds — preparatory  schools 
for  boys  of  15,  who  remained  two  years,  and 
"  schools  for  non-commissioned  officers,"  which 
took  the  pupils  from  the  preparatory  schools, 
and  any  other  candidates  between  the  ages  of 
17  and  20  who  had  good  recommendations  and 
a  good  elementary  education.  Those  who 
passed  through  both  schools  could  become  non- 
commissioned officers  at  the  age  of  19. 

The  quality  of  the  non-commissioned  officers 
was  certainly  very  various.  The  general  level 
of  education,  both  general  and  military,  was 
high,  but  system  was  more  powerful  than  initia- 
tive, and  especially  among  the  younger  non- 
commissioned officers  there  was  a  lack  of  real 
discipline  combined  with  a  taste  for  authority 
which  developed  easily  into  brutality. 

The  corps  of  officers  of  the  German  Army 
was  composed  in  the  main  of  two  classes  of  can- 
didates, "  cadets,"  who  had  received  all  their 
education  in  the  special  cadet  schools,  and 
youths  who,  at  the  end  of  their  ordinary  school 
education,  had  joined  the  rank=i  as  Fahnenjiinker 
with  a  view  to  obtaining  coromissions.  The 
second  class,  which  fomxed  about  two -thirds  of 
the  whole,  enjoyed  preliminary  advantages  in 
proportion  to  their  educational  attainments, 
and  the  Emperor  William  had  always  endea- 
voured to  raise  the  general  level  by  gi\dng  special 
advantages  to  those  who  had  passed  the 
"  abitvirient,"  or  leaving,  exanxination  of  the 
public  schools.  A  small  percentage,  about 
five  or  six  per  cent.,  had  passed  one  year  at  a 
university  before  entering  the  Army.  Two 
tests  had  to  be  satisfied  by  every  candidate, 
whatever  his  origin.  He  had  to  pass  the  general 
examination  qualifying  him  for  a  commission. 
His  nomination  had  also  to  be  approved  by 
a  vote  of  the  officers  of  the  regiment  which 
he  was  to  join.  This  requirement  was  main- 
tained with  absolute  rigour,  and  served  to 
uphold  the  very  strong  class  distinctions  in 
the  different  arms  and  even  in  different  regi- 
ments of  the  same  arm.  It  was  an  absolute 
barrier  to  the  entrance,  for  instance,  of  Jews, 
whether  as  officers  or  reserve  officers. 

The  cadets  were  for  the  most  part  sons  of 
officers  or  of  Civil  servants  of  the  higher  grades. 
Having  obtained  a  nomination  they  entered  a 
cadet  school  at  the  age  of  10,  passed  a  prelimi- 
nary examination  at  the  age  of  17,  and  then, 
normally,    served    with    the    colours    for    six 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


81 


months  as  non-commissioned  officers.  Thence 
they  passed  into  a  war  school,  and  obtained  their 
commissions  at  about  the  age  of  19.  Trained 
to  arms  as  it  were  from  the  cradle,  and  imbued 
with  military  traditions  and  military  doctrine, 
the  officers  who  canae  from  the  cadet  schools 
retained  the  stamp  throughout  their  lives. 
Curiously  enough,  the  first  cadet  companies 
formed  in  Prussia  in  1686  were  composed  of 
French  children  whose  families  had  emigrated 
after  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes. 
When  the  French  supply  of  candidates  fell  off, 
Frederick  William  I.  reorganized  the  corps 
by  bringing  all  the  schools  together  in  Berlin. 
Frederick  the  Great  improved  the  system, 
especially  by  mitigating  the  severities  of  the 
training  and  treating  the  boys,  as  he  said,  "  not 
like  farm  hands  but  like  gentlemen  and  future 
officers."  In  the  Seven  Years  War  he  employed 
as  officers  cadets  hardly  14  years  old.  The 
schools  were  kept  up  with  varying  success. 
After  the  war  of  1870  there  was  a  great  increase 
in  the  number  of  candidates.  The  Berlin  cadets 
were  established  all  together  in  the  famous 
cadet  school  at  Gross-Lichterfelde.  There  were 
cadet  schools  also  at  Bensberg,  Coslin,  Karlsruhe, 
Naumburg,  Plon,  Potsdam,  and  Wahlstadt. 

The  great  Army  Law  of  1913  involved,  as  we 
have  seen,  an  addition  of  no  less  than  4,000 
officers.  Matters  were  so  arranged  as  to  secure 
a  considerable  improvement  in  the  rate  of 
promotion.  For  some  years  discontent  had 
been  growing  among  the  officers  themselves, 
and  the  congestion  in  the  lower  ranks  of  the 
officers'  corps  of  this  enormous  Army  which  had 
seen  practically  no  war  for  more  than  40  years, 
caused  grave  misgivings  as  to  its  real  efficiency 
in  the  field.  The  statistics  of  1910  and  1911 
showed  that,  on  the  average,  Prussian  officers 
had  to  wait  from  14  to  16  years  for  promotion 
to  the  rank  of  captain,  and  from  11  to  12  years 
more  for  promotion  to  the  rank  of  major.  In 
Bavaria  promotion  was  considerably  more 
rapid,  but  for  the  young  Prussian  officer  the 
main  hope  was  to  find  his  way  into  the  General 
Staff,  where  advancement  was  s\are. 

We  have  now  reviewed  the  main  elements  in 
the  composition  of  the  great  German  military 
machine.  It  is  easy  to  realize  that  its  working 
affected  closely  the  whole  fabric  of  society,  and 
that  the  claims  and  the  spirit  of  the  Army  per  ■ 
vaded  everything.  Although  the  wars  of  1864* 
1866,  and  1870  were  but  a  faint  memory  to  the 
greater  part  of  the  population,  the  military 
spirit  was  kept  alive  by  every  possible  means, 
in  the  schools,  in  the  Army  itself,  and  in  politics. 
As  regards  the  corps  of  officers,  tradition  was 


GENERAL    VON    HAUSEN. 

enormously  strong,  and  it  was  well  supported  by 
family  and  personal  interest.  The  Army  was 
ever  the  most  important  of  all  professions,  and 
every  attempt  to  lower  its  position  was  resisted 
with  the  utmost  vigour.  All  the  well-intended 
and  ingenious  proposals  which  emanated  from 
Great  Britain  and  other  countries  for  reduction 
or  limitation  of  armaments  were  of  necessity 
doomed  to  failure,  because  the  German  Empire 
was  saturated  with  the  belief  that  the  future 
belonged  to  the  strong,  and  that  the  only  way 
to  keep  Germany  strong  was  not  only  to  train 
every  available  man  for  service  in  the  field,  but 
to  keep  the  whole  nation  in  the  strong  military 
grip  of  Prussia  and  to  maintain  as  the  head  and 
the  mainspring  of  the  State  the  Prussian  military 
caste.  Notwithstanding  all  theories  of  equal 
opportunity,  and  even  the  sincere  efforts  of  the 
Emperor  William  to  check  the  growth  of  luxury 
in  the  Army  and  especially  in  "  crack  "  regi- 
ments, social  gradations  continued  to  be 
reflected  nowhere  so  accurately  as  in  the  German 
Army  List.  Commissions  in  the  Prussian 
Guard,  for  instance,  and  especially  in  the 
more  exclusive  regiments,  such  as  the  famous 
regiment  of  Gardes  du  Corps,  were  the  undis- 
puted preserve  of  the  great  land-owning  families. 
And  so  down  to  the  humblest  Une  regiment  in 
the  dullest  and  least  desirable  frontier  garrisons. 
If  the  prevailing  motive  at  the  top  of  the  sca.'e 
was  the  determination  to  retain  power — and 
power  in  the  Army  meant  power  throughout  1  he 


82 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GERMAN  SIEGE  GUN. 


[Topical. 


State — the  prevailing  motive  lower  down,  in  the 
scale  was  pride.  For  some  years  before  the 
Great  War  the  Array  had  begun  to  be  infected  by 
the  luxury  and  materialism  which  had  come  of 
too  rapid  prosperity  and  increase  of  wealth. 
But  the  great  majority,  especially  of  regimental 
oflficers,  were  keen,  hard,  simple,  and  devoted 
soldiers,  whose  only  reward  for  their  work  was 
the  proud  position  which  they  enjoyed.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  level  of  real  intelUgence  was 
not  high.  Like  people  in  so  many  other  spheres 
of  Ufe  in  Germany,  the  officers  were  often  well- 
instructed  without  being  well-educated,  cock- 
sure and  self-satisfied  without  being  intelligent. 
Judged  even  more  by  the  officers  than  by  the 
men,  the  German  Army  was  an  Army  which 
badly  needed  some  sharp  lessons  from  ex- 
perience and  especially  from  defeats. 

Throughout  the  officers'  corps  ran  an  almost 
universal,  if  at  most  times  good-natured, 
contempt  for  civilians  as  such,  and  a 
conviction  that,  while  poUtical  freedom 
must  be  tolerated  to  a  certain  extent,  there 
were  well-defined  limits  beyond  which  freedom 
mvist  not  go.  The  field  of  German  poUtics 
was  dotted  with  landmarks  and  boundaries 
defining  the  points  at  which  "  the  military " 
would  as  a  matter  of  course  intervene.  The 
Army  devoted  its  special  attention  on  the  one 
hand  to  the  growth  of  Socialism  and  on  the 
other  hand  to  any  culpable  moderation  in 
dealing  with  the  frontier  populations — Alsa- 
tians, Poles,  and  Danes.  In  the  year  before  the 
war  the  famous  Zabem  affair  afforded  a  peculiar 


illustration  of  the  fact  that  the  Army,  and 
not  the  Government  or  the  Civil  Administration, 
was  the  supreme  force  in  the  provinces  which 
Bismarck  had  taken  from  France.  Similar 
tendencies  were  at  least  as  strong  in  Posen  and 
even  in  Schleswig-Holstein.  As  for  Socialism 
it  was  one  of  the  great  resources  of  military 
argument — jast  as,  for  the  matter  of  that,. 
"  militarism  "  weis  one  of  the  gieat  resources^ 
of  Socialist  argmnent.  Year  after  year  the 
Reichstag  debates  on  the  Army  estimates 
consisted  of  sham  fights  between  the  Prussian 
Minister  of  War,  whoever  he  might  be,  and 
the  Socialist  leaders.  The  Socialists  carried 
on  an  incessant  campaign  against  the  brutal 
treatment  of  recruits,  a  campaign  which  had 
some,  but  not  in  latter  years  very  much, 
foimdation  in  fact.  The  Minister  of  War 
invariably  railed  against  the  perils  of  Socialism 
in  the  Army,  and  accused  the  Socialists  of  sowing 
the  seeds  of  mutiny  and  even  of  treason.  Both 
parties  to  these  disputes  knew  very  well  that 
the  Army  was  ia  no  danger  whatever  from 
public  opinion  and  that  in  the  hour  of  need 
every  German  would  rally  to  the  flag. 

As  to  German  feeling  generally,  it  would  be 
too  much  to  say  that  the  Army  was  universally 
popular,  but  military  service  was  accepted  as 
a  matter  of  course,  and  with  absolute  belief 
not  only  in  its  value  for  the  country's  defence 
but  in  its  vast  importance  as  a  training  for 
civil  hfe  and  for  all  organized  effort.  The 
Socialist  party  itself  based  its  imequalled 
organization  upon  military  standards,  and  tha 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


83 


training  of  the  whole  youth  of  the  country  at 
an  impressionable  age  to  regard  themselves 
as  part  of  one  great  machine  was  the  root  of 
most  of  the  order  and  discipline  that  pervaded 
German  hfe  and  was  so  impressive  and  so 
deceptive.  It  was  especially  deceptive  as 
regards  the  "  peace-loving  "  character  of  the 
German  people,  and  concealed  reahties  that 
were  all  too  horribly  revealed  as  soon  as  the 
German  people  went  to  war.  From  the 
Army  the  whole  people  learned  the  beliefs  and 
habits  that  were  afterwards  the  strongest  in 
daily  hfe.  They  learned  to  control  and  also 
to  obey,  to  organize  and  be  organized,  and  to 
accept  as  in  the  nature  of  things  a  systematic  a- 
tion  of  life  that  was  nothing  but  a  reflection  in 
every  sphere  of  the  spirit  and  methods  of  the 
Prussian  Army. 

We  have  seen  that  at  the  outbreak  of  war  the 
German  Army  consisted  of  25  Army  Corps.  Since 
the  increases  and  changes  effected  in  1913  they 


were  grouped  in  eight  "  inspections."  These 
inspections  were  at  Danzig  (General  von 
Prittwitz  und  Gaffron)  for  the  I.,  XVII.,  and 
XX.  Army  Corps  ;  at  Berlin  (General  von 
Heeringen)  for  the  Prussian  Guard  Corps,  the 
XII.  Army  Corps,  and  the  XIX.  Armv  Corps  ; 
at  Hannover  (General  voa  Bii'ow)  for  the  VIT.. 
IX.,  and  X.  Army  Corps;  at  Munich  (Prince 
Rupert  of  Bavan'a)  for  the  III.  Army  Corps  and 
the  I.,  II.,  and  III.  Bavarian  Corps  ;  at 
Carlsruhe,  the  capital  of  Baden  (the  Grand 
Duke  of  Baden)  for  the  VIII.,  XIV.,  and  XV. 
Army  Corps  ;  at  Stuttgart,  the  capital  of 
Wiu-temberg  (Duke  Albert  of  Wvirtemberg) 
for  the  IV.,  XI.,  and  XIII.  Army  Corps;  at 
Saarbriicken  (General  von  Eichhorn)  for  the 
XVI.,  XVIII,  and  XXI.  Army  Corps  ;  and  at 
Berlin  (General  von  Kluck)  for  the  II.,  V. 
and  VI.  Army  Corps.  The  peace  distribution 
and  composition  of  Army  Corps  is  shown  in 
the  accompanying  table : — 


PEACE    DISTRIBUTION  AND  COMPOSITION  OF  THE   GERMAN  FIELD  ARMY* 

ON   OCTOBER    1,    1913. 


Infantry. 

Cavalry. 

Artillery. 

^ 

Regiments. 

—              " 

Bat- 

t/Gri*^**- 

Corps. 

Corps  H.Q. 

i 

r 

"m 

^ 

09 

§ 

> 

1 

eS 
be 

i 

a 

I 

CO 

1 

e8 

1 

m 

m 

i 

g 

'3 

i 
1 

P 

i 

3 

! 

o 

i 

a 
•sb 

S 

1 

60 

2 

o 

5 

m 

« 

W 

1-5 

m 

A 

02 

o 

ft 

rt 

P 

W 

m 

K 

w 

E 

W 

Prussian  Qua 

rd       . .  Berlin  . . 

2 

6 

11 

33 

2 

4 

8 

40 

2 

2 

1 

3 

_ 

2 

4 

9 

24 

3 

I.       Corps  . 

. .  Konigsberg 

2 

4 

8 

24 

- 

3 

6 

30 

1 

- 

2 

2 

2 

4 

9 

24 

3 

II.           „     . 

. .  Stettin . . 

2 

4 

9 

27 

_ 

2 

4 

20 

2 

— 

1 

— 

2 

4 

8 

24 

— 

III.         ,,     . 

. .  Berlin 

2 

4 

8 

24 

2 

4 

20 

1 

1 

1 

- 

2 

4 

9 

24 

3 

IV.         „     . 

. .  Magdeburg 

2 

4 

8 

24 

2 

4 

20 

- 

2 

1 

- 

2 

4 

8 

24 

- 

V.           „     . 

. .  Posen 

2 

5 

10 

30 

2 

4 

20 

— 

1 

— 

2 

1 

2 

4 

9 

24 

3 

VI.         „     . 

. .  Breslau 

2 

6 

10 

30 

3 

6 

30 

1 

2 

1 

1 

2 

4 

8 

24 

_ 

VII.       „     . 

. .  Miinster 

2 

5 

10 

30 

2 

4 

20 

- 

2 

1 

- 

2 

4 

8 

24 

- 

VIII.      „     . 

. .  Coblenz 

2 

4 

8 

24 

_ 

2 

4 

20 

- 

2 

_ 

1 

2 

4 

8 

24 

_ 

IX.         „     . 

. .  Altona 

2 

5 

10 

30 

2 

4 

20 

_ 

2 

2 

_ 

_ 

2 

4 

8 

24 

_ 

X.           „     . 

. .  Hannover 

2 

4 

8 

24 

2 

4 

20 

_ 

2 

1 

1 

- 

2 

4 

8 

24 

- 

XI.         „     . 

. .  Cassel 

2 

4 

8 

24 

2 

4 

20 

- 

1 

1 

_ 

2 

2 

4 

9 

24 

3 

XII.(lstR.  S 

axon)     Dresden 

2 

4 

8 

24 

2 

2 

4 

20 

1 

- 

2 

1 

_ 

2 

4 

9 

24 

3 

XIII.  Corps 

. .  Wurtemberg   . . 

2 

4 

9 

27 

- 

2 

4 

20 

- 

2 

- 

2 

- 

2 

4 

8 

24 

- 

XIV.      „     . 

. .  Karlsruhe 

2 

5 

10 

30 

_ 

2 

4 

20 

_ 

3 

_ 

_ 

1 

2 

4 

8 

24 

— 

XV.        „     . 

. .  Strassburg 

2 

4 

8 

24 

2 

2 

4 

20 

- 

2 

1 

_ 

1 

2 

4 

8 

24 

- 

XVI.     „     . . 

. .  Metz     . . 

2 

4 

8 

24 

— 

3 

6 

30 

— 

2 

1 

1 

2 

2 

4 

8 

24 

— 

XVII.    „     .. 

. .  Danzig 

2 

4 

8 

24 

1 

2 

4 

20 

- 

_ 

3 

- 

1 

2 

4 

8 

24 

- 

XVIII.  „     . . 

. .  Frankfurt  -  on  - 

Main 

2 

4 

9 

27 

_ 

2 

4 

20 

_ 

3 

_ 

1 

_ 

2 

4 

8 

24 

- 

XIX.(2nd  R. 

Saxon)  Leipzig 

2 

4 

8 

24 

- 

2 

4 

20 

1 

- 

1 

2 

- 

2 

4 

9 

24 

3 

XX.  Corps  . . 

. .  AUenstein 

2 

4 

8 

24 

1 

2 

4 

20 

1 

2 

1 

_ 

_ 

2 

4 

9 

24 

3 

XXI.      „     . . 

. .  Saarbriicken    . . 

2 

4 

9 

27 

- 

2 

4 

20 

_ 

1 

_ 

3 

_ 

2 

4 

10 

24 

6 

I.  Bavarian . . 

.    Munich 

2 

4 

8 

24 

1 

2 

4 

19 

2 

_ 

_ 

_ 

2 

2 

4 

8 

24 

- 

II.    Bavarian 

. .  Wiirzburg 

2 

4 

8 

24 

1 

2 

4 

20 

_ 

— 

- 

2 

2 

2 

4 

9 

24 

3 

III.  Bavarian 

. .  Niimberg 

2 

4 

8 

24 

- 

2 

4 

18 

- 

- 

- 

- 

4 

2 

4 

8 

24 

- 

50 

106  217 

651 

18 

— ^_> 

55 

110 

647 

14 

28 

23 

25 

20 

50 

100211 

600 

33 

66 

9 

110 

633~ 

♦The  above  table  is  compiled  from  Lob^ll's  Jabrberichte,  1913.      Fortress    artillery,  pioneers,  railway  and 
telegraph  troops,  flying  corps,  ^nd  train  battaUous  are  omitted. 


84 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


I 

1 

>^'-    .     •'     '^         '                                                           '^             -                :. 

^^^^^^^^^^H^^^^SRH^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ra^^^^^^B^K^P^^^^^^H 

GERMAN  TELEPHONE  RANGEFINDER. 


[CerUral  News. 


The  Generals-in-Command  were  Baron  von 
Plettenberg  (Prussian  Guard)  ;  von  Francois 
(I.)  ;  von  Linsingen  (II.)  ;  von  Lochow 
(III.) ;  Sixt  von  Arnim  (IV.) ;  von  Strantz 
(V.) ;  von  Pritzelvritz  (VI.) ;  von  Einpm  (VII.) ; 
Tiilff  von  Tschepe  und  Weidenba^h  (VIII.) ;  von 
Quasi  (IX.)  ;  von  Emmich  (X.) ;  Baron  von 
Scheffer-Boyadel  (XI.);  von  Elsa  (XII.)  ; 
von  Fabeck  (XIII.);  von  Hoiningen  (XIV.)  j 
von  Deimling  (XV.) ;  von  Mudra  (XVI.) ;  von 
Mackensen  (XVII.) ;  von  Schenck  (XVTII.) ;  von 


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it:^'-et'^»:^^ 

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GERMANS  TAKING  OBSERVATIONS. 

[Record  Press. 


Kirchbach  (XIX.) ;  von  Scholtz  (XX.) ;  von 
Biilow  (XXI.) ;  von  Xylander  (I.  Bavarian) ; 
von  Martini  (TI.  Bavarian)  ;  and  Baron  von 
Horn  (III.  Bavarian). 

Apart  from  the  eight  army  inspectors  there 
were  an  inspector-general  of  cavalry  in  Berlin, 
with  inspections  of  cavalry  at  Posen,  Stettin, 
Strassburg,  and  Saarbriicken ;  an  inspector- 
general  of  field  artillery  in  Berlin  ;  an  inspector- 
general  of  garrison  artillery  in  Berlin,  with 
inspections  at  Berlin,  Strassburg,  and  Cologne  ; 
an  inspector-general  of  engineers  and  fortresses 
in  Berlin,  with  inspections  at  Berlin,  Posen, 
Strassburg,  Mainz,  and  Thorn ;  an  inspector- 
general  of  communication  troops  in  Berlin, 
with  inspections  of  railway  troops,  military 
telegraphs,  and  military  aviation  and  aeronau- 
tics ;  a  train  inspection ;  and  an  inspection  of 
machine  guns. 

There  were  also  military  governors  and  com- 
mandants at  the  following  strong  places  : — 
Altona,  Borkum,  Cuxhaven,  Geestemiinde,  HeU- 
goland,  and  Wilhelmshaven  on  the  North  Sea ; 
Danzig,  Friedrichsort,  Kiel,  Konigsberg,  Swine- 
miinde,  and  Pillau  on  or  near  the  Baltic ; 
Breslau,  Glatz,  and  Glogau  in  Silesia  ;  Posen, 
Thorn,  Grandenz,  and  Feste  Boyen,  and  other 
barrier  forts  along  the  eastern  frontier  ;  Metz, 
Bitsche,  and  Diedenhofen  (Thionville)  in  Lor- 
raine ;  Neu  Breisach,  Hiiningen,  Freibuig, 
Strassburg,  Germersheim,  Mainz,  Coblenz, 
Cologne,  and  Wesel  along  the  Rhine  ;  Ciistrin 
on  the  Oder  ;  Ulm  and  Ingolstadt  on  the 
Danube. 

The  Emperor,  who  became  supreme  in  war, 
was  supreme  in  peace  also,  except  for  the  degree 


THE    TIMES  HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


85 


of  independence  retained  after  1870  by  the 
Bavarian  army  and  to  some  extent  by  the 
Saxon  and  Wurtemberg  forces.  Apart  from  the 
Great  General  Staff,  which  is  dealt  with  else- 
where, and  the  "  inspections  "  already  enume- 
rated, the  Emperor's  functions  were  performed 
through  the  Ministry  of  War  and  through  his 
Military  Cabinet.  The  existence  of  the  Military 
Cabinet,  whose  head  was  at  all  times  the  Em- 
peror's chief  agent  and  mouthpiece,  was  a 
frequent  subject  of  controversy  and  the  charge 
of  dual  control  and  of  interference  with  the 
powers  of  the  Imperial  Chancellor  (who  was 
responsible  for  the  Ministry  of  War  as  for  all 
other  Departments  of  State)  and  of  Parliament 
was  often  made.  In  reality  serious  difficulties 
only  arose  in  times  of  political  crisis,  which  were 
always  in  Germany  to  a  peculiar  extent  times  of 
intrigue,  and  the  Emperor's  Military  Cabinet, 
no  less  than  his  Naval  and  Civil  Cabinets,  was 
a  necessary  part  of  the  machine  of  "  personal  " 
government.  It  was  the  business  of  the 
Military  Cabinet  to  report  to  the  Emperor  on 
all  military  questions  and  to  form  a  channel 
of  commiuiication  between  him  and  the  generals 
in  command  of  army  corps,  and  also  to  dial 
with  promotions,  transfers,  and  other  personal 
questions. 

The  Ministry  of  War  was  the  supreme  ad- 
ministrative authority  of  the  Army  responsible 
for  recruiting,  equipment,  commissariat,  forti- 
fications,   pay,    and     mobilization.       It     was 


GENERAL    VON    EINEM. 

divided    into    some    half-dozen    departments, 
which  were  subdivided  again  into  sections. 

The   finances   of   the    Army   were   managed 
through  a  central  bureau  [General  Militarkasse\ 


GERMAN  SIEGE  GUN  IN  TRANSIT. 


,  Topical. 


'LENSBURt 
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TERRITORIAL  DISTRIBUTION  OF 

GERMAN  ARMY  CORPS  AREAS. 

HEADQUARTERS  ofARMYCORPS ^H  Dantzig  • 

BAVARIAN  AND  SAXON  CORPS __._ BAV.  SAX  . 

HEADQUARTERS  ofDIVISIONS 38.0  ERFURT 

,,   WURTTEMBURG  DIVISIONS-  O  (I.W) 
„   CAVALRY  INSPECTION...  C^4 

„  ARTILLERY       „    A3 

„  ENGINEERS      .,      *2 

PIONEERS/      ,,    ▼! 


7/0 


88 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


COLOUR- SERGEANT,  ALEXANDER 

GRENADIER  GUARD  REGIMENT. 

iBaU. 


The  organization  of  the  Army  was  immensely 
assisted  by  the  perfection  of  the  general  organi- 
zation of  the  State  services — for  example,  rail- 
ways and  telegraphs.  Not  only  was  the  Anny 
ready  to  assume  control  of  these  services,  but 
the  services  were  ready  to  be  taken  under  mili- 
tary control.  Immediately  after  the  war  of 
1870  the  Army  began  to  pay  special  attention 
to  the  training  of  railway  troops,  able  both  to 
manage  existing  railways  and  to  construct  new 
ones.  The  establishment  of  military  control  of 
the  postal  and  telegraph  systems  was  effected 
without  the  least  difficulty  or  confusion.  Within 
an  hour  or  two  of  the  dispatch  of  the  ultimatums 
to  Russia  and  France  and  the  declaration  of  the 
"  state  of  imminent  peril  of  war,"  the  telegraph 
offices  all  over  Germany  were  in  the  hands  of  the 
military,  working  indeed  at  higher  pressure  but 
without  any  disturbaace. 

Not  content  with  universal  ser\ace  at  home, 
the  German  Government  in  1913  passed  an  im- 
portant Law  definitely  linking  up  rights  of 
nationality  with  the  performance  of  military 
service.  It  was  always  one  of  the  bitterest 
blows  to  German  pride  that  the  vast  majority  of 
German  emigrants  were  finally  lost  to  the 
country.  The  provision,  hitherto  existing,  that 
residence  abroad  for  more  than  10  years  involved 
loss  of  German  nationality  unless  the  emigrant 


in  Berlin,  with  a  branch  for  each  army  corps 
district.  As  soon  as  the  Finance  Law  for  the 
.year  had  been  passed  the  Ministry  of  War  fixed 
the  distribution  of  the  credits,  and  cominuni- 
cated  with  the  Army  through  the  Intendantur 
of  each  army  corps.  So  the  funds  passed 
down  to  the  smallest  administrative  units — 
a  company,  or  a  battery,  or  a  squadron.  All 
the  administrative  services  of  the  Army  were 
governed  by  minutely  detailed  regulations,  and 
the  whole  machine  was  constructed  with  a  view 
to  smooth  and  uniform  working  in  peace  time — 
an  aim  which  was  certainly  attained — and  to  the 
utmost  possible  speed  and  precision  on  mobiUza- 
tion. 

There  was,  indeed,  no  army  that  ever  existed 
which  was  so  sure  to  be  found  completely  ready 
when  war  began,  so  perfectly  able  to  strike  at 
once  with  all  its  force.  Only .  defeats,  and  a 
series  of  defeats,  could  seriously  upset  such  an 
organization.  Only  a  long  process  of  attrition 
could  dangerously  disturb  the  elaborate  prepara- 
tions for  the  concentration  and  movement  of 
troops,  and  for  supplying  them  always  and  every- 
where with  all  that  they  would  need  in  the  field. 


GENERAL    VON    HINDENBURG, 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


89 


GERMAN  SIEGE  HOWITZER. 


iRecord  Press. 


took  special  steps  to  preserve  his  German  status 
was  repealed.  On  the  other  hand,  loss  of  nation- 
ality was  rendered  certain  in  the  case  of  Grermans 
who   failed   to   perform   their   military  service 


within  a  fixed  time  of  having  been  declared 
deserters.  Special  facilities  and  extensions  of 
time,  however,  were  granted  to  Germans  living 
abroad. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  THE 

FIELD. 


The  Reserve  Formations  and  their  Use — The  "  Sudden  Maximttm  " — Speed  in  Action — The. 
General  Staff — Violence  in  Execution — Study  of  Detail — ^Expansion  in  War —Estimate 
OF  Available  Numbers — Use  of  Reserves — The  Emperor  and  his  Moltke — Commanders — 
The  Army  C!orps  Organization — Cavalry  and  Reserve  Divisions — Infantry  and  Machine- 
gun  Tactics — Cavalry  Tactics — Artillery  Tactics — Artillery  Armament — German  Heavy 
Howitzers — Other  Troops — Supplies — ^Hospitals — ^Mechanical  Efficxency, 


THE  peace  organization  of  the  German 
army  gave,  of  course,  a  very  in- 
adequate notion  of  its  full  strength 
when  mobilized  for  action.  Behind 
the  units  which  figvired  on  the  peace  establish- 
ments, even  after  their  completion  to  war 
strength,  were  huge  reserves,  and  the  intended 
composition  and  employment  of  these  reserves 
— ^whether  in  the  form  of  duplication  or  triplica- 
tion of  a<:tive  army  units  or  of  attachment  of 
newly -formed  reserve  units  to  each  Army  Corps, 
or,  again,  of  their  grouping  in  fresh  and  indepen- 
dent Army  Corps  of  their  own — ^was,  as  a  French 
student  remarked  but  a  short  time  before  the 
war,  "  the  great  secret  of  the  Supreme  Com- 
mand." For  that  reason  it  was  somewhat 
futile  to  condemn,  on  the  authority  of  Clause- 
witz  himself,  the  two-unit  organization  (regi- 
ments,,  paired  in  brigades,  brigades  paired  in 
divisions,  divisions  paired  in  Army  Corps),  for 
nothing  would  be  simpler  than  to  convert 
the  binary  system  into  a  ternary  one,  by  adding 
a  reser\'e  regiment  to  each  brigade,  a  reserve 
brigade  to  a  division,  and  so  on  at  the  moment 
of  mobilization. 

These,  and  similar  possibilities  of  variation, 
however,  must  be  considered  as  the  unofficial 
student's  reservations  forced  upon  him  by  the 
imperfection  of  his  data  rather  than  as  matters 
kept  open  for  eleventh  hour  decision  by  the 
German  authorities.    The  use  to  which  reserve 


formations  would  be  put  was,  as  we  have  said, 
the  secret  of  the  higher  command.  But  it  was 
certainly  settled  both  in  principle  and  in 
detail  long  before  the  war.  Similarly,  while 
to  outsiders  it  appeared  doubtful  whether 
Germany  would  employ  the  vast  masses  of  able- 
bodied  men  who  had  received  no  training,  no 
such  doubt  existed  in  the  confidential  mobiliza- 
tion schemes. 

This  mobilization  scheme  presented  the 
sharpest  contrast  with  that  of  (^reat  Britain. 
For  the  characteristic  of  the  latter  was  that  it 
was  based  upon  the  assumption  of  a  long  war,  in 
which  the  British  Army,  small  at  first,  would 
be  expanded  by  an  elaborate  machinery  of 
recruit  depots  and  reserve  battalions  at  home, 
until  at  the  end  of  the  war  its  strength  was 
at  a  maximum.  Under  the  German  system 
its  strength  was  at  its  greatest  in  the  first 
days  and  at  its  lowest  at  the  close  of  a  war. 
Continental  critics  were  well  aware  of  this 
difference,  and,  as  most  of  them  subscribed  to 
the  ruling  opinion  that  the  war  would  be  a  brief 
shock  of  extreme  violence,  they  reproached 
Great  Britain  with  keeping  too  large  a  propor- 
tion of  the  available  trained  men  in  reserve 
formations,  destined  only  to  fill  gaps 
in  the  first  line  and  meantime  idling  at 
a  moment  when  every  soldier's  place  was  at 
the  decisive  point.  Such  was  the  reproach. 
Whether  it  was  well  or  ill  deserved  we  need 

90 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


91 


not  inqtiire.  It  was  connected  only  indirectly, 
if  at  all,  with  the  other  favourite  reproach 
that  British  citizens  would  not  take  the  "  manly 
resolution "  of  adopting  compulsory  service  ; 
and,  indeed,  it  was  only  natural  that  a  Con- 
tinental Army  which  developed  its  whole  power 
in  a  fortnight  or  three  weeks  should  read  with 
amazement  that  with  120,000  odd  serving 
soldiers  at  home  and  some  140,000  regular 
reservists,  besides  special  reserves  and  terri- 
torials registered  for  foreign  service.  Great 
Britain  could  only  produce,  at  the  outset,  an 
Expeditionary  Force  of  170,000  men. 

No  army  in  the  world  represented  the  theory 
of  the  sudden  immediate  maximum  better 
than  the  German,  not  even  the  French,  for 
the  doctrines  of  strategy  held  in  honour  at  the 
Ecole  de  Guerre  were  based  upon  the  "  offensive 
return,"  and  by  that  very  fact  admitted  that 
every  day  had  a  to-morrow,  whereas  the  ideal 
of  the  Kriegsakademie  was  "  the  day,"  i.e., 
the  battle  without  a  to-morrow,  complete  and 
all  sufficing.  The  question  for  the  French  was, 
whether  a  short  service  national  army  would  be 
capable  of  endviring  till  their  to-morrow  came. 
And  it  was  the  chief  virtue  of  the  German 
theory  of  war  that  it  was,  in  theory  at  least, 
based  upon  the  human  nature  of  citizen-soldiers, 
men  capable  of  one  effort  of  maximum  violence 
and  possibly  little  else.  In  the  event  the  French 
proved  their  case  by  proving  that  the  staying 
power  of  human  nature,  when  fortified  by  a 
just  cause  and  an  honest  anger,  was  far  greater 
than  the  German  theory  admitted.  But, 
bearing  in  mind  the  likelihood  of  Germany's 
having  to  fight  for  existence  on  "  two  fronts  " 
and  the  consequent  desire  to  bring  the  struggle 
on  one  of  these  fronts  to  the  speediest  possible 


HERR  KRUPP  VON  BOHLEN  UND 
HALBACH. 

issue,  the  German  theory  of  war  had  much  to 
recommend  it.  The  bases  of  that  theory,  in 
principle  and  in  detail,  will  be  discvissed  later. 
Our  present  concern  is  to  show  the  mutual 
relations  of  the  theory  and  the  army  that  was 
to  put  it  into  practice. 

The  theory  demanded,  first  of  aU,  speed  in 
action  on  a  large  scale — not  so  much  actual 
speed  of  manoeuvre  or  of  march  as  reduction 
to  zero  of  the  waste  of  time  that  would  result 
from  imperfect  arrangements  for  the  larger 
movements    of  Army  Corps   and    armies — and 


NEW    GERMAN    BQMB-GUN. 


BOMB-GUN    READY    FOR    FIRING. 


92 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


sound  staff-work  was  the  essential  condition 
for  securing  this  speed.  How  successfully 
this  condition  had  been  met  1870  and  the 
Kaisermanover  of  the  years  of  armed  peace 
showed.  In  respect  of  what  may  be  called 
its  business  side  the  German  General  Staff  had 
no  superior  in  the  world.  It  is  recorded  that 
the  casualty'  and  ammunition  returns  of  the 
troops  that  fought  at  Gravelotte  and  St. 
Privat,  on  August  18,  1870,  were  in  the  hands 
of  the  general  headquarters  before  dawn  on 
the  19th,  to  serve  as  the  basis  for  Von  Moltke's 
next  decision.  More  than  this  no  staff  could 
do.  But  even  this  staff  had  its  imperfections, 
both  on  service  (as  in  the  cases  of  the  lost 
dispatch  of  Rezonville  and  the  army  orders 
of  Worth)  and  on  manoeuvres,  and  if  its  occa- 
sional errors  were  to  be  neutraUzed  this  had 
to  be  done  by  the  troops.  Hence  the  over- 
marching  so  often  noted  and  criticized  on 
manoeuvres. 

The  possibility  of  over -marching  the  men  was 
itself  another  means  of  obtaining  speed.  The 
condition  of  weary  blankness  to  which  it  reduced 
the  men  was  accepted  as  a  necessary  evil.  What 
mattered  was  the  punctual  execution  of  the 
programme  laid  down  at  all  costs.  But  here 
again  it  was  minutely  careful  organization  of 
regimental  detail  rather  than  the  pace  of  the 
individual   that   was   relied   upon   to   produce 


the  result.  Thus  it  was  that  in  1870,  in 
modern  manoeuvres,  and  in  1914  aUke  the 
ground  covered  by  German  units  was  astonish- 
ing, even  though  the  troops  in  themselves  were 
slow  and  heavy. 

The  theory  demanded,  further,  extreme 
violence  in  execution — that  is,  an  output  of 
power  so  great  that  it  would  have  wrecked 
delicate  machinery.  Simplicity  and  strength, 
therefore,  were  just  as  characteristic  of  the 
German  Army  system  as  thorough  organization. 

Lastly,  as  the  attempt  to  produce  by  envelop- 
ment a  day  of  battle  that  needed  no  morrow 
of  pursuit  reqiiired  great  extension  of  front,  and 
therefore  either  extraordinarily  high  develop- 
ment of  the  lateral  communications  or,  in  the 
alternative,  deployment  at  the  outset  in  accor- 
dance with  a  preconceived  and  unalterable  plan, 
it  followed  that  the  German  Army  and  all  its 
material  auxiliaries,  stich  as  railway  platforms 
and  loop  lines,  could  and  had  to  be  arranged 
and  prepared  in  peace  in  accordance  with 
plans  and  time-tables  studied  and  considered 
at  leisure — in  accordance,  in  fact,  with  the 
"  Fundamental  Plan." 

On  these  foundations  the  German  Army 
organization  was  built  up  until  1912.  After 
that  year,  indeed,  there  was  a  noticeable  ten- 
dency to  develop  it  on  different  lines,  owing  to 
the  rise  of  new  military  Powers  to  the  south- 


GERMAN  MILITARY  MOTOR  GAR.     GUN  IN  POSITION  FOR  FIRING  AT  AEROPLANES. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


93 


east  of  Austria  and  to  the  "  speeding-up " 
of  the  Russian  Army.  But  up  to  the  declara- 
tion of  war  in  1914  the  tendency  had  done  no 
more  than  round  off  the  old  system  as  a 
preparation  for  a  new  one,  and  in  point  of 
organization  the  army  that  took  the  field 
in  that  year  was,  substantially,  the  army  that 
had  been  conceived  20  years  before  and  slo'wly 
matured.  What  other  qualities  and  possi- 
bilities had  been  sacrifired  to  the  perfection  of 
the  organization  the  story  of  the  war  itself 
will  show  in  due  course.  But  the  military 
machine,  as  a  machine,  was  strongly  built, 
powerful,  speedy,  and  well  oiled. 

Let  us  see,  first,  how  the  peace  organization 
of  the  active  army  was  supposed  to  function 
on  mobilization.  At  any  given  moment  the 
infantry — to  take  the  most  important  arm 
first — consisted  of  the  professional  officers  and 
non-commissioned  officers  and  two-year  con- 
tingents of  conscripts.  The  peace  establish- 
ment of  the  infantry  battalion  stood  in  1914 
at  about  740  for  certain  corps*  and  670  for  the 
rest.  To  complete  to  a  war  establishment 
of  about  1,080,  no  corps  required  more  than 
35  per  cent,  of  reservists, f  and  some  needed  only 
20  per  cent.  In  other  words,  hardly  one 
vear's  contingent  of  reservists  was  needed 
for  the  completion  of  the  active  unit  to  war 
establishment.  Cavalry,  as  in  most  other 
countries,  had  one  more  squadron  in  peace  than 
in  war- — in  this  case  5  to  4 — and  it  rode  out  of 
barracks  for  field  service  with  few  or  no  reservists, 
either  men  or  horses,  in  its  ranks.  In  the  artil- 
lery, the  senous  defect  of  low  horse  establish- 
ment had  been  removed,  and  the  foot  (heavy) 
artillery  had  been  increased,  both  as  to  number 
of  units  and  establishment,  an  increase  which 
was  to  have  no  small  influence  on  the  war. 
These  few  details  will  serve  to  show  the  care 
that  was  taken  to  make  the  first-line  army  as 
professional  as  was  humanly  possible  within 
the  limits  imposed  by  citizen  recruiting  and 
short  service.  It  is  true  that  the  increased 
establishm'ents  referred  to  were  recent — they 
formed,  in  fact,  the  greater  part  of  the  changes 
consequent  upon  the  Balkan  wars — but  it  is 
eqii  Uy  true  that  they  took  effect  upon  the 
army  of  1912.  It  was  as  though  a  rebuilding 
of  the  old  edifice  upon  new  lines  had  been  begun 
by  the  strengthening  of  the  structure  as  it 
stood. 

Another  portion  of  the  peace  mechanisrti 
provided      the      cades      for      reserve      vinits. 


*  About  45  per  cent,  of  the  infantry  were  on  (he  higher  estab- 
lishment. 

tVery  small  deductions  need  be  made  for  unfit,  bp  the  establish- 
ment is  a  minimum  and  not  a  maximum  ;  8  to  9  per  cent,  additional 
conscripts  being  taken  m  yearly  to  m«et  "  wastage." 


'^H^^K 

'^  t 

m 

f 

'^^'"' 

'***     ^ 

.^^S^ 

IjR 

b^ 

^&S1 

^^H 

Hk 

l?^ 

T^^^l 

■ 

y^mm^ 

■ 

i 

9 

■ 

GENERAL    VON    MOLTKE. 

Chief   of   the    Great    General    Stafif  of    the 

German   Army. 

Following  the  example  of  France,  Germany 
had  provided  her  active  peace  regiments  with 
supernumerary  officers  of  the  higher  ranks, 
whose  future  task  it  was  to  form  the  thousands 
of  reservists  whom  the  mobilized  active  unit 
did  not  need  (viz.,  the  four  classes  aged 
25-28)  into  reserve  regiments.  Up  to  1913 
it  had  been  intended  to  form  one  reserve 
battalion,  but  the  increase  of  recruit  intake 
and  establishments  in  1913  set  free  enough 
reservists  for  the  formation  of  two  reserve 
battalions  per  active  regiment.  And  not  only 
the  reserve,  but  also  the  Landwehr  of  still  older 
men,  had  its  expansion  mechanism.  The  majors 
administering  Landwehr  districts  became,  on 
mobilization,  commanders  of  Landwehr  batta- 
lions. 

In  sum,  the  units  of  the  principal  arms  in 
1914  could  be  estimated  with  fair  accuracy  as 
follows  : — 


— 

Battalions  of 
Infantry. 

SaTiadronsof 
Cavalry 

Batteries  of 
Field  Art.* 

Active 
Reserve    . . 
Landwohr 

669 
434 
310 

550 
)       About 
(         SOOJ 

633 

300t 

§ 

•Including  horse  artillery  batteries. 

t  Would  probably  include  Lar.dwehr  men  to  some  extent,  as  re- 
servists were  required  to  man  the  ammunition  columns  of  the 
mobilized  active  army. 

tEeserve  squadrons,  i.e.,  drafting  dep6ts.  of  active  regiments 
not  included. 

ILack  of  horses  would  vaako.  the  mobiiizatiOQ  of  th^  oattenes 
very  difficult. 


94 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


PRINCE  VON  BULOW.      {Tot>ic^. 

Formations  of  older  men  (Landsturm)  for 
local  defence  scarcely  concern  xis,  except  in  so 
far  as  they  released  Landwehr  units  for  line- 
of -communication  service  near  the  front.  In 
respect  of  this  branch,  the  German  organization 
was  in  no  way  superior  to  that  of  France  and 
other  belligerents,  more  stringent  administra- 
tion of  the  liabihty  lists  being  covmterbalanced 
by  the  lack  of  that  local  initiative  which  in  this 
local  service  is  worth  more  than  bureaucratic 
efficiency. 

As  regards  the  total  military  force  at  the 
disposal  of  the  Emperor,  an  estimate  of  1913 
gave : — 

Active     army      reserve,    and    Landwehr, 

all  trained  (3,700,000  gross),  net  . .     3,100,000 

Ersatz  reserve  (surplus  of  annual  con- 
tingents— i.e.,  men  of  active  army  and 
reserve  age,  who,  though  fit,  had  never 
served)       , .  . .  . ,  . .  . .         900,000 

.Other?  liable,  mostly  untrained,  of  all  ages 
and  trained  men  over  36  (gross  about 
5,000,000),  net,  say  3,000,000 

7,000,000 
net 

Of  these  trained  men,  the  units  of  the 
active    army,    reserve    and    Landwehr    (1,403 


battalions,  850  squadrons,  933  battei'ies, 
plus  engineers,  train,  &c.)  would  absorb 
about  2,100,000,  or  somewhat  less,  leaving 
one  million  trained  men,  as  well  as  nearly 
the  same  number  untrained  in  hand.  More 
than  half  of  these  1,900,000  would  be  available 
for  replacing  casualties  in  the  active  army,  even 
after  all  garrisons,  railway  guards,  &c.,  had  been 
provided  for  on  a  liberal  scale,  both  in  officers 
and  in  men. 

Now  this  capacity  for  sustained  war  at  first 
sight  appears  to  be  opposed  to  the  first  objects 
of  German  organization — ^the  sudden  blow  of 
maximum  violence.  The  discrepancy  is,  how- 
ever, only  apparent,  for  however  boldly  Ger- 
many staked  the  whole  of  her  finest  troops  on 
the  chance  of  crushing  her  western  neighbour  in 
three  weeks,  she  had  to  make  allowance  lor 
the  needs  of  "  containing "  that  neighbour 
when  the  active  regiments  hastened  eastward  to 
deal  with  the  Russians.  Just  as  in  the  first 
stage  little  more  than  reserve  formations  would 
be  told  off  to  delay  the  Russians  while  the 
active  army  crushed  France,  so  too  in  a  second 
stage,  not  only  had  the  gaps  in  her  active 
army,  now  opposed  to  Russia,  to  be  filled,  but 
extra  reserve  formations  had  to  be  provided 
on  a  grand  scale  in  order  to  hold  France  down 
when  conquered. 

A  single  active  army — ^as  nearly  professional 
and  as  independent  of  reservists  as  possible — 
two  sets  of  reserve  formations,  one  to  go  west 
with  the  Active  Army  and  to  reraain  in  the 
west,  the  other  to  hold  the  east  imtil  the  Active 
Army  could  be  transferred  thither  ;  in  addition, 
coast  defence  troops,  fortress  garrisons,  and 
railway  guards,  and  unformed  masses  of  indi- 
viduals to  replace  casualties  in  each  and  aU  of 
these  categories  of  service  units — such,  in  brief, 
seems  to  have  been  the  composition  of  the 
German  Army  in  1914. 

The  effective  command  of  these  millions  was, 
as  in  1870,  vested  in  the  Kaiser,  who  as 
"  Supreme  War  Lord "  {Oberste  Kriegsherr) 
of  the  Empire  enjoyed  powers,  even  in  the 
kingdoms  of  other  members  of  it,  such  as  not 
even  the  Tsar  exercised  over  the  Russiar  armies* 
He  was  both  King  and  commander-in-chief,  as 
every  HohenzoUern  ruler  had  been  before  him. 
His  experience  in  handling  troops  on  manoeuvres 
was  probably  as  great  as  that  of  any  man  living, 
and  his  favourate  finale,  the  charge  of  cavalry 
masses,  though  ridiculed  in  other  countries,  was 
regarded  by  some  few  level-headed  critics  as  a 
proof  of  nerve  and  judgment,  for  men  who  can 
handle  50  or  60  squadrons  at  the  gallop  are,  and 
always  were,  rare  in  any  army.  What  was 
more  doubtful  than  his  cavalry  qualities  was  his 


THE    TIMES   HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


95 


capacity  as  supreme  director  of  millions.  Of 
the  cold,  steady  mind,  the  shrewdness,  the  sense 
of  proportion  of  Moltke,  he  had.  given  no  evi- 
dence. It  was  fortunate  for  Prussia  that  her 
modern  military  system  had  been  designed  at  a 
time  when  the  ruling  HohenzoUern  was  not  a 
first-class  soldier,  and  needed  a  chief  of  the  great 
General  Staff  to  "  keep  him  straight."  The 
institution  of  this  office  had  had  as  its  result, 
first,  the  effacement  of  the  King  as  initiator  of 
strategical  and  tactical  operations ;  secondly, 
the  possibility  of  selecting  the  best  general  of  the 
Army,  irrespective  of  seniority,  as  the  real  direc- 
tor of  operations  (since  he  was  only  an  adviser 
to  the  King  and  not  a  commander  set  over  bis 
seniors) ;  thirdly,  the  intimate  correlation  of 
peace -preparation  and  war-action,  in  that  the 
same  officer  and  his  staff  managed  both ;  and, 
lastly,  the  combination  both  of  authority  and  of 
responsibility  in  the  head  of  the  State.  This 
peculiar  method  of  command,  tried  in  two  wars, 
had  succeeded.  But  William  I.  was  both  a 
veteran  of  the  campaigns  against  Napoleon, 
and  a  man  of  remarkable  solidity  of  character, 
and  his  Moltke  was  a  very  great  soldier.  No 
one  could  prophesy  an  equally  easy  wondng  of 
the  system  when  the  commander-in-chief  was 
both  imaginative  and  erratic  and  the  chief  of 
■stsSi  an  ordinary  general.  But  the  Germans 
pinned  their  faith  to  the  system  of  combining 
the  man  of  highest  authority  with  the  man 
selected  for  greatest  technical  ability.  The 
system — always  the  system  ! 

For  the  purpose  of  operations  the  General 
Headquarters  then  consisted  of  the  Kaiser  and 
the  Chief  of  the  General  Staff.  The  units  imme- 
diately controlled  by  them  were  styled  armies, 
and  nimibered  I.,  11. ,  &c.  In  many  cases, 
though  not  in  all,  the  army  commanders  were 
the  "  Army  inspectors  "  of  peace.     For  some 


years  before  the  war  the  25  Army  Corps  had  been 
grouped  for  purposes  of  inspection  and  training 
under  these  inspectors,  of  whom  latterly  there 
were  eight.  It  had  been  assumed  that  these 
generals  would  command  armies  composed  of 
the  army  corps  with  which  they  had  dealt 
in  peace.  This  was  not  in  all  cases  done.  But 
the  principle  remained,  and  the  forces  in  the 
field  were  divided  into  armies,  each  tmder  its 
own  army  conamander  and  consisting  of  three 
or  more  army  corps  and  one  or  more  cavalry 
divisions,  according  to  the  part  entrusted  to 
each  in  the  "  fundamental  plan." 

The  army  corps,  without  reserve  formations 
incorporated  in  it,  was  the  basic  rniit  of  the 
Army.  In  peace  time  it  consisted  of  two 
divisions,  each  of  two  infantry  brigades  (=  four 
regiments  =  twelve  battalions)  ;*  one  cavalry 
brigade,  and  one  field  artillery  brigade.  To 
one  or  other  of  the  divisions  were  attached  a 
light  infantry  battalion,  a  pioneer  battalion 
(equivalent  to  the  British  field  units  of  Royal 
Engineers),  and  a  battalion  of  train  (Army 
Service  Corps). 

As  a  rule  each  corps,  division,  &c.,  was 
recruited  and  stationed  in  its  own  area,  and 
from  this  fact  had  resulted  a  considerable 
advantage  in  speed  of  mobilization,  since  the 
unit's  reservists  were  close  at  hand.  But  the 
absorption  of  all  the  Polish,  Alsatian  and 
Lorraine  recruits  in  the  units  of  the  V.,  XV., 
and  XVI.  corps  was  naturally  dangerous, 
and  these  corps  drew  recruits  from  all  over 
the  Pnissian  dominions,  as  also  did  the  Corps 
d' elite  of  the  Guard ;  as,  however,  these  units 
were  frontier  corps,  they  stood  on  an  exception- 
ally high  peace  footing  and  needed  few  reser- 


*  This  statement  held  good  In  the  case  of  16  corps :  the  others 
contained  0.  10  and.  In  the  case  of  the  Guard.  11  regiments.  A' 
corps  with  10  or  more  regiments  formed  an  extra  brigade. 


UHLANS. 


06 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


vists,  so  that  their  more  general  recruiting  did 
not  impair  their  rapidity  of  mobilization.* 

In  close  connexion  with  this  territorial  re- 
cruiting stood  the  organization  of  "  Landwehr 
districts "  above  mentioned,  whereby  the 
closest  touch  was  maintained  between  the 
recruits  of  the  district,  its  serving  soldiers, 
and  its  reservists  of  all  ages.  It  had  formerly 
been  the  practice  to  split  up  the  units  of  each 
corps  in  many  towns,  with  a  view  to  preserving 
this  local  touch ;  but  in  more  recent  years 
the  risk  of  small  isolated  units  falling  into  a 
stagnant  condition  had  been  seen,  and  though 
the  system  was  retained,  it  was  supplemented, 
at  great  expense,  by  the  provision  in  each 
corps  area  of  a  central  training  camp,  in  which 
the  troops  spent  the  summer  in  company. 


•The  former  objections  to  the  employment  of  Hanoverians  in 
the  X.  Corps  had  practically  ceased  to  be  valid,  and  that  corps 
was  to  all  intents  and  purposes  territorially  recruited. 


In  war,  one  division  of  each  corps  gave  up 
its  cavalry  brigade  and  its  horse  artillery, 
which  went  to  form  part  of  a  cavalry  division,* 
and  the  other  brigade  was  broken  up  so  as  to 
give  each  division  of  the  corps  a  regiment  of 
divisional  cavalry. 

Thus  cleared  of  the  units  that  belonged  to 
it  only  for  purposes  of  peace  recruiting  and 
administration,  the  normal  corps  consisted  of 
two  divisions  and  an  extra  battalion  of  infantry, 
two  cavalry  regiments  attached  to  the  divisions, 
two  field  artillery  brigades,!  one  to  each  divi- 
sion, and  technical  and  departmental  troops, 
as  shewn  in  the  diagram  annexed. 


*There  had  been  prolonged  controversy  on  the  subject  of  the 
permanent  cavalry  division,  but,  except  in  the  Guard,  no  organized 
cavalry  division  existed  in  peace. 

tThese  were  far  larger  units  than  the  British  Field  Artillery 
"  brigade,"  which  was  a  lieutenant-colonel's  command  of  three 
batteries,  whereas  tne  German  was  a  major-general's  commacd 
of  two  field  artillery  regiments. 


ORDRE    DE  BATAILLE 
a*?"  DIVISION 


OF  A  NORMAL   CORPS 
I?T  DIVISION 


iii 

666 

iii 

6i6 

A6i 

iii 

iii 

iii 

X 

± 

J- 

_L 

±. 

J_ 

-L 

J. 

Infentry  Regiments  and  Machine 
Gun  Companies 

Infantry  Regiments  end  A/Jachine 
Gun  Companies 

Inf.  brigade 

Inf.  Brigade 

Inf  Brigade 

Inf  Brigade 

Field  Artillery  Brigade 

Field  Artillery  Brigade 

F  Arty.Regt. 

F  Arty  Regt. 

F  Arty  Regt 

F  Arty.  Regt. 

FArty. 
Croup 

FArty 
Croup 

FArty. 
Croup 

FArty. 
Croup 

FArty. 
Croup 

FArty. 
Croup 

FArty 
Croup 

FArty. 
Croup 

'i  'i  1' 

'i  1'  i 

1'  1'  1' 

1'  1 1' 

■J.  .J.  i. 

ill  ill  ill 

ill  1*  1' 

■J,  .j,  1, 

m 

IS] 

SI 

isi 

isi 

IS] 

m 

IS) 

Croup 

Am. 

Column 

Croup 

Am. 
Column 

Croup 

Am. 

Column 

Croup 

Am. 

Column 

Croup 

Am. 

Column 

Croup 

Am. 

Column 

Croup 

Am. 

Column 

Croup 

Am. 
Column 

^\^[£{h  ICe\^f^egt. 

l£llil(£l^  f  Cav.Regt 

LJ   /  Pioneer  Company 

n   /  Pioneer  Company 

O-O  /  Telephone  Detach^ 

OO  /  Telephone  Detach^ 

W  1  Bridging  Train 

W  J  Bridging  Tram 

m    1  Sanitary  Company 

Q    1  Sanitary  Company 

THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR, 
CORPS  TROOPS 


97 


Ijl    Ijl    ijl    ijl 

Medley  Ho  wither 

Battel  ion  and 

Am. ,  Column 


O  Air   Service 

O  Signal     •• 

O  yV/reless  " 

O  Telegraph  •• 

O  Telepfione " 


DIVISIONAL  TRAINS  Etc.       CORPS  TRAINS  Etc.       DIVISIONAL  TRAINS  Etc. 


[+]   ff  Field  Hospitals 
O  Veterinary  Section 

Corps   Bridging 
Train 

[+1  e  Field  Hospitals 
O  Veterinary  Section 

Field  Bakeries 

o    o 

Ammunition  Columns 

^^^^^>..^    /ve/c/  Cun 
EIEIEJS        end 

Ho^r.  Am. 

Ammunition 
Column 

13 

Hvy.  Artillery 

Ammunition  Columns 

_r,^^r,    T'leld  Gun 
EIESI3        ^nd 

Hown  Am. 

Train 

E     Baggage 
^     Supply 

Train 
13     Baggage 

ORDRE     DE     BATAILLE      OF     A     CAVALRY    DIVISION 


Brigade 

Brigade 

Brigade 

Regt 
0000 

Regt 
0000 

Regt 
VMVM 

Regt 
VMVM 

Regt 

Regt 
VMVM 

Q   Wire/ess 
Section 

Q   Pioneer 
Section 


iJi  il!  Ill 


3  Horse  Batteries 
end  em.  cols. 


Macfi/ne 
X      Gun 
Section 


98 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


A  Reserve  division,  whether  forming  the 
third  division  of  an  active  corps  or  grouped 
with  other  reserve  divisions,  was  similar  in 
strength  and  organization  to  an  active  division, 
except  that  it  had  only  one  regiment  of  field 
artillery  (6  batteries)  instead  of  two.  The 
larger  units  of  the  Landwehr,  grouped  by 
themselves  or  with  reserve  units,  varied  in 
composition  according  to  the  resources  available 
on  mobilization  and  their  special  tasks. 

The  strength  of  the  army  corps  of  25  battalions, 
eight  squadrons,  and  24  field  batteries,  with  its 
combatant  and  non-combatant  auxiliaries,  was, 
according  to  j&eTj-nert's  Handbuch  for  1913,41,000 
all  ranks  with  14,000  horses  and  2,400  vehicles, 
guns  included.  That  of  a  cavalry  division, 
without  auxiUaries  other  than  those  shown  in 
the  diagram  (*)  was  5,000  man,  5,300  horses, 
and  200  vehicles  inclusive  of  guns.  It  will  be 
observed,  therefore,  that  the  German  army 
corps  was  practically  equivalent  to  two  British 
divisions,  but  that  a  German  cavalry  division 
was  little  more  than  half  as  strong  as,  and  much 
less  completely  equipped  in  technical  troops 
than,  the  British.  Nor  had  the  German  division 
any  heavy  guns,  although  the  army  corps 
was  usually  provided  with  one  heavy  howitzer 
battalion.  The  equipment  of  the  Germans  in 
machine  guns  was  also  less  complete.  We  have 
hitherto  considered  the  units  of  each  arm  simply 
as  blocks  to  be  arranged  in  large  and  small  boxes 
called  corps,  divisions,  and  brigades.  It  remains 
to  described  their  structure  Eind  their  working 
in  rather  more  detail. 

The  infantry  regiments,  commanded  by  a  full 
colonel,  had  thqee  battalions,  each  com- 
manded by  a  lieutenant-colonel  or  a  major,  and 
a  machine  gun  company.     The  battalion  had 

(*)  The  provision  of  a  cavalry  train  was  another  controversial 
subject  in  Germany.  There  was  much  to  be  said  for  it,  but  it  is 
worth  noting  that  in  Great  Britain  the  cavalry  train  introduced  in 
1911  was  abolished  in  1913. 


fom"  companies,  commanded  by  mounted 
captains,  and  the  company,  three  platoons, 
imder  subalterns.  The  war  strength  of  the 
company  in  officers  and  men  was  270,  which 
gave  about  250  rifles  for  the  firing  line.  Thus, 
broadly,  the  strength  of  tho  12-company 
regiments  was  3,000  rifles. 

The  machine  gun  company  of  the  regiment 
had  six  guns,  the  same  proportion  to  the 
battalion  as  in  the  British  Army.  But  the 
different  organization  must  be  noted,  for  it 
had  reference  to  a  different  idea  of  the  uses 
of  machine  guns.  Whereas  in  the  British 
and  French  Army  these  weapons  were  scattered 
by  pairs  amongst  the  battalions  at  the  outset 
with  a  view  to  aiding  the  development  of 
maximum  fire  power  from  a  minimum  number 
of  men,  thus  economizing  defensive  forces  for 
the  benefit  of  the  eventual  counter-attack, 
the  German  machine  guns  were  massed  in  a 
group  and  regarded  as  a  reserve  of  fire,  which 
enabled  the  local  commander  to  dispense  with 
human  reserves  and  to  put  his  whole  force  of 
rifies  into  action  from  the  first  without  fear. 
Here  is  an  example  of  tactical  doctrine 
and  formal  organization  dovetailing  into 
one  another.  The  machine  gun  is  a  compendium 
of  some  fifty  rifles,  and  was  so  regarded  in 
all  armies ;  in  the  French  and  British  it 
was  deployed  at  the  outset  in  order 
to  allow  the  equivalent  number  of  men  to  be 
reserved,  and  in  the  German  it  was  reserved 
in  order  to  allow  these  men  to  be  deployed 
at  the  outset.  The  German  infantry  machine 
guns  were  conveyed  on  the  march  in  a  wagon, 
and  when  unpacked  for  action  were  fitted 
underneath  with  sleigh-runners  and  dragged 
across   country.* 


•The  cavalry  machine  gun  battery  (one  per  division)  was  somewhat 
differently  organized. 


QERMAN    FIEJ.D    BATTERY, 


THE    TIMES  HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


99 


THE    PRUSSIAN    GOOSE     STEP. 


The  weapon,  of  the  infantry  soldier  was 
the  excellent  long  rifle  of  1898,  with  a  box 
magazine  taking  a  clip  of  five  cartridges  at  a 
time. 

In  the  infantry  company  a  certain  number 
of  buglers,  range-takers,  and  signallers  formed 
a  small  party  under  the  captain's  orders,  distinct 
from  the  platoons — an  arrangement  that  had 
been  copied  by  the  British  Army  from  the 
German  a  short  time  before  the  war. 

The  ruling  idea  of  infantry  tactics  was  the 
development  of  the  greatest  possible  fire -power, 
which  it  was  sought  to  produce  by  forming 
very  strong  firing  lines  at  long  range  so  as  to 
open  fire  simultaneously  when  more  effective 
ranges  were  reached.  Behind  this  strong  firing 
line  came  supports,  also  deoloyed,  so  as  to  be 
able  to  fill  up  the  gaps  along  the  length  of  the 
firing  h'ne  as  men  were  shot  or  straggled  away 
for  safety.  Not  dash,  but  sheer  power,  was  the 
ideal.  Even  the  bayonet  charge  was  regarded 
as  merely  a  way  of  "presenting  for  payment  the 
cheque    drawn    by    rifle-fire,"    as    the    sequel 


rather  than  the  culmination  of  the  infantry 
attack.  In  the  interests  of  this  theory  the 
Germans  had  their  infantry  formations  princi- 
pally selected,  if  not  exclusively,  with  a  view 
to  rapid  deployment.  The  old  "  company 
column  "of  1870 — platoons  in  line  one  behind 
the  other — was  freely  used  under  the  name 
of  "  column  of  platoons,"  and  a  new  "  company 
column "  had  been  introduced  which  affords 
yet  another  example  of  the  dovetailing  of  doc- 
trine and  organization.  In  appearance  it  was 
exactly  the  same  as  a  French  or  British  "  line  of 
platoons  in  fours,"  but  whereas  in  the  armies 
of  the  Allies  it  was  a  formation  for  manoeuvring 
under  fire  in  Germany  it  was  used  to  reduce 
the  time  of  deployment  to  a  minimum,  so  as 
to  show  that  powerful  fire -front  to  which  the 
Germans  pinned  their  faith  as  rapidly  as 
possible.  Their  confident  belief  in  the  power 
of  fire  to  win  battles  has  already  been  mentioned 
in  connexion  with  machine  guns,  and  it  will  be 
sufficient  here  to  note  that  it  underlay  all  their 
severely  practical  formations,  from  that  of  the 


GERMAN  MILITARY  MOTOR-GAR,  ARMED  WITH  A  KRUPP  GUN  FOR  FIRING  AT 

AEROPLANES.  [Ceniral  News. 


100 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


division  on  the  march  down  to  that  of  the 
platoon  under  shrapnel  fire. 

The  unit  of  the  cavalry,  as  always,  was  the 
squadron  of  about  150  sabres — *'  lances " 
would  be  a  better  expression,  since  the  whole 
of  the  German  cavalry,  and  not  the  Uhlans 
alone,  were  armed  with  the  lance.  The  regi- 
ment on  service  had  four  squadrons  of  this 
strength,  commanded  by  captains  with 
subalterns  in  charge  of  the  "  troops,"  of  which 
there  were  four  to  the  squadron.  No  arm  of 
the  service  had  been  the  object  of  more 
severe  criticism  and  attack  than  the  cavalry, 
and  the  events  of  the  South  African  War  and 
the  ManchurJan  Campaign  had  not  been  en- 
couraging to  the  champions  of  the  old  knee- 
to-knee  charge,  in  which  for  a  generation  before 
1900  the  Germans  had  excelled  all  others. 
Even  in  Germany  the  orthodox  views  on 
cavalry  had  been  rudely  challenged,  and  so 
high   an   authority   as   Bernhardi   had   openly 


joined  the  heretics.  At  one  time,  only  a  couple  of 
years  before  this  war,  it  had  even  been  seriously 
proposed  that  the  German  trooper  should  be 
armed  with  the  rifle  and  bayonet.  In  this 
instance,  then,  German  tactical  ideas  both 
official  and  unofficial  were  in  a  state  of  flux, 
and  no  certain  indication  as  to  the  details  of 
cavalry  action  could  have  been  discerned  in 
advance.  There  were,  of  course,  general 
principles,  such  as  that  of  reconnaissance  by 
cavalry  masses  as  the  best  basis  of  general 
strategic  dispositions — a  principle  which  the 
opposite  party  flatly  denied — but  in  so  far  as 
these  were  true  there  was  nothing  new  about 
them,  and  in  so  far  as  they  were  new  tho 
doctrines  of  the  Bernhardi  school  were  at 
least  questionable.  What  the  special  quality," 
the  differentia,  of  German  cavalry  was  to  be 
was  then  unknown.  Formerly  it  had  excelled 
on  its  own  solid  ground  in  the  horsemastership 
and  individual  riding  that  Schmidt,  Rosenberg, 


CONGEALED  GERMAN  ARTILLERY. 


[Ctntral  Ntws. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    OTi?    ;TFM;fif; ':  ^,  ^\^ -\\    101 


Seufft-Pilsach,  and  cavalry  leaders  of  their 
stamp  had  made  the  basis  of  the  grand  charge. 
Now,  not  only  had  its  enemies  learned  as  much, 
but  it  was  doubtful  whether  the  grand  charge 
would  figure  in  the  new  cavalry  tactics  at  all. 
The  regimental  organization  of  the  field  artillery 
is  shown  in  the  diagram.  For  each  infantry 
division  one  regiment  was  available,  each  of 
two  groups  {Abteilungen)  of  three  six-gun 
batteries  and  a  light  ammunition  column. 
In  one  of  the  two  regiments  a  howitzer  group 
was  substituted  for  one  of  the  gun  groups. 
Each  battery  had,  in  addition,  an  "  observation 
wagon,"  from  the  ladder  of  which  its  captain 
directed  the  fire.  To  each  gun  one  battery 
wagon  was  allotted,  but  all  these  wagons, 
collectively  called  the  echelon  (staffel),  marched 
in  rear  of  the  guns  and  only  three  were  normally 
brought  up  alongside  the  guns  in  action.  Herein 
the  German  artillery  procedure  presented  a 
sharp  contrast  to  the  more  up-to-date  methods 
of  the  French  and  the  English,  whose  batteries 
always  had  one  wagon  per  gun  and  sometimes 
more  in  the  fighting  line,  as  well  as  a  second 
and  even  a  third  in  the  wagon  line.  This 
comparative  poverty  of  immediate  ammuni- 
tion supply  the  Germans  expected  to  make  good 
by  means  of  the  light  ammunition  column, 
which  was  organized  on  the  basis  of  one  wagon 
per  gun.  The  British  and  German  systems 
may  thus  be  compared  : — 

Wagons  per  battery — 

German     firing    battery,     3 ;     staffel,     3 ; 

light  ammunition  coliman,  6=12.* 

British  firing  battery,    6  ;   wagon  line,   6  ; 

brigade  ammunition  column,  6=18.* 

As  in  the  case  of  the  cavalry,  so  in  that  of 
the  artillery,  tactical  ideas  in  Germany  were 
in  a  state  of  flux.  But  whereas  in  the  case  of 
the  cavalry  the  disputants  on  both  sides  were 
well  abreast  of  the  times,  in  that  of  the  artillery 
an  unfortunate  blunder  of  the  higher  authorities 
had  compelled  the  arm  to  lag  behind  the  same 
arm  in  other  countries,  and  that  at  a  pericd  in 
which  artillery  was  developing  with  unheard  of 
rapidity.  In  1896  the  German  Government 
decided  to  rearm  its  field  batteries  with  the 
C/96  gun,  a  breech-loader  that  was  probably 
better  than  any  gun  of  corresponding  date  in 
other  armies.  This  was  carried  out  at  enormous 
expense  almost  immediately.  But  in  1897 
France  rearmed  with  an  entirely  new  class  of 
gun,  the  quick-firer,  and  it  soon  became  evident 
that  artillery  tactics  and  even  tactics  in  general 
had     been     revolutionized.     Germany,     tound 


*Plus  gun-Umbers  in  each  case  ;  the  observation  wagon  of  the 
German  battery  also  carried  some  ammunition. 


MEMBERS  OF  THE  GERMAN  RED  CROSS 
CORPS. 

[Newspaper  Illustrations, 

wanting  for  once  in  that  shrewd  foresight  with 
which  she  is  generally  credited,  had  to  face  the 
fact  that  her  brand-new  guns  were  out  of  date. 
But  as  it  was  impossible  to  spend  fresh  millions 
on  a  rearmament  there  was  nothing  to  be  done 
but  to  watch  and  wait.  Lest  moral  should  suffer 
it  was  asserted  that  the  '96  gun  was  "  practic- 
ally "  a  quick-firer,  and  that  no  revolution  in  tac- 
tics, artillery  or  other,  had  come  about  in  con- 
sequence of  the  new  French  weapon.  Thus 
the  methods  and  instructions  of  field  artillery 
training  remained  in  the  breech- leader  era 
while  other  armies  were  successively  following 
the  lead  of  France.  The  points  of  the  quick- 
firer  are  somewhat  technical,  but  they  can  be 
summed  up  roughly  in  one  phrase — the  steady 
carriage  and  the  free-recoiling  gim.  The 
anchoring  of  the  carriage  made  it  possible  to 
fire  with  far  greater  speed,  since  the  gun- 
carriage  did  not  leap  back  on  firing,  and  had  not 
to  be  re-layed  at  each  round,  as  of  old.  It 
made  indirect  fire  from  behind  cover  com- 
paratively easy,  since  the  carriage  accurately 
kept  its  position  and  angles  once  measured 
from  an  observing  station  held  good 
in  action.  The  recoil  of  the  gun 
along  the  set  path  of  its  guides  or 
runners  was  so  smooth  that  the  accuracy 
of  fire  was  greater  than  it  had  ever  been.  And, 
lastly,  the  gun-carriage  remaining  steady,  the 
men  serving  the  gun  could  take  cover  behind 
a  gun -shield  and  had  not  at  every  round  to 
stand  clear  of  the  wheels.  In  every  one  of 
these  important  points  the  German  gim,  good 


102 


WE:  /iJJ^ES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


GERMAN    TRANSPORT. 


of  its  kind  as  it  was,  was  totally  wanting,  and 
its  tactics  had  necessarily  to  conform — or 
rather  were  prevented  from  following  the 
progress  of  other  artilleries.  Presently  the 
crisis  passed  as  a  means  was  found  of  converting 
the  guns  so  as  to  recoil  on  an  anchored  carriage. 
It  became  "  96/NA,"  a  true  quickfirer,  though, 
as  was  to  be  expected,  not  a  very  successful 
one.  In  power  .and  general  quality  it  was 
inferior  to  the  gun  of  any  European  Power's 
first  line  army,  and  equivalent,  or  nearly  so, 
to  the  British  Territorial  Army's  converted 
15 -pounder.  One  advantage,  however,  it 
possessed  over  better  models — it  was  very  light 
to  man-handle  in  action.  What  other  possi- 
bilities had  been  sacrificed  to  this  no  one  but 
the  designers  could  tell.  But  the  advantage, 
so  far  as  it  went,  was  incontestable.  It  must 
be  noted  however  that  the  gun  limbered  up 
and  travelling  was  quite  as  heavy  as  other  field- 
gun  equipments  elsewhere.  In  other  respects, 
such  as  speed  of  ranging  and  accuracy  of 
shrapnel  fire  under  normal  conditions,*  eeise  of 
switching  batteries  on  to  successive  targets, 
&c.,  the  Germans  were  at  a  very  great  dis- 
advantage, and  if  the  infantry  that  underwent 
its  fire  in  1914  spoke  of  it  with  respect,  it  was 
chiefly  because  time -shrapnel  fire  on  a  large 
scale  had  never  been  experienced  by  that 
infantry.  Destructive  bombardment  of  ac- 
ciu*ately  located  trenches  by  Germtin  field- 
guns  was  occasionally,  if  not  frequently,  re- 
corded, but  in  its  function — the  chief  function 


•Hence,  probably,  the  desperate  efforts  made  by  the  Germans 
to  take  ranges  by  means  ot  spies,  reported  by  British  and  other 
soldiers  in  the  w^. 


of  field  artillery — of  covering  the  infantry's 
advance  to  the  assault,  the  cool  shooting  of 
the  British  infantry  on  the  defensive  proves 
it  to  have  failed. 

But  if  the  fit  Id  gun  and  its  tactics  were 
below  the  most  modern  standards,  the 
howitzers,  both  great  and  small,  were  of  the 
most  modern  and  formidable  tjrpes,  and  it 
is  probable  that  most  of  the  effect  achieved 
by  the  German  artillery  in  the  war  was  the  work 
of  the  howitzers. 

The  field  howitzers  (4'lin.  calibre),  as  we 
have  said,  formed  part  of  the  field  artillery  of 
the  divisions  and  were  organized  in  the  same 
way,  in  a  group  {abteilung)  of  three  six-gun 
batteries  and  ammunition  column.  The  heavy 
howitzers  were,  however,  manned  by  the  foot 
artillery  (corresponding  to  the  British  Royal 
garrison  artillery).  A  heavy  field  howitzer 
battalion  horsed  for  field  service  with  an  army 
corps  consisted  of  four  four-gun  batteries  of 
6in.  (15c/m.)  howitzers  with  two  extra  observa- 
tion wagons  to  enable  the  whole  to  work  in  two 
two -battery  groups.  The  battery  of  four  guns 
had  an  observation  wagon,  four  first  wagons  with 
the  guns,  four  second  wagons  in  the  staffel, 
and  a  light  ammunition  column.  The  mobility 
of  these  weapons  was  roughly  that  of  the  60- 
poimder  long  gun  of  the  British  Army. 

Heavier  still  were  the  mortars*,  of  8.4in.  and, 
for  siege  purposes,  of  llin.  calibre,  on  special 
wheeled  carriages,  of  which  the  wheels  were 
equipped  so  as  to  give  a  good  bearing  both  on 

•A  certain  number  of  batteries  were  equipped  with  4in.  and  5in. 
long  guns  iu&tead  of  heavy  howitzers  anu  mortars. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


103 


FORTIFICATIONS    OF   THE    RHINE    FRONTIER. 


104 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


(GERMAN  FIELD  POST-OFFICE. 

[Newspaper  Illustrations. 

the  road  and  on  the  ground  when  firing.  This 
device  had  been  so  far  perfected  that  the  great 
llin.  howitzers  (mortars)  which  had  hitherto 
required  concrete  beds  were  brought  into  action 
before  the  Belgian  fortresses  on  their  own 
wheels. 

The  horse  artillery,  of  which  11  groups  were 
provided  for  the  service  of  11  line  cavalry 
divisions,  were  organized  in  four-gun  batteries. 
The  gun  was  simply  the  field  gun  stripped  of 
the  gunners,  their  kits,  and  various  other 
weights,  and  not  a  lighter  piece  in  itself  as 
was  the  British  horse  artillery  gun. 

The  foot  artillery  allotted  to  fortresses  and 
the  fortress  engineers  falls  outside  the  scope 
of  the  present  chapter,  which  deals  with  field 
armies  and  field  units  only.  Little  need  be 
said,  too,  of  the  field  engineers,  who  were 
styled  pioneers,  except  that  the  sharp  division 
of  the  whole  technical  arm  into  fortress  euid 
barrack  engineers  and  field  pioneers  is  in 
complete  contrast  to  the  organization  of  the 
British  royal  engineers,  who  form  one  large 
corps,  of  which  all  parts  are  officially  considered 


•Rather  because  only  22  were  available  under  the  previous 
six-gun  battery  organization  for  33  cavalry  brigades  than  from 
general  acceptance  on  tactical  grounds  of  the  foiu:-gun  principle, 
■which  in  other  countries  had  rapidly  grown  in  'avour  since  the 
adoption  of  the  duick-fiier. 


to  oe  interchangeable.  Shortly  before  the  ww 
it  had  been  suggested  that  the  German  system 
should  be  adopted  in  Great  Britain,  but  the 
controversy  which  grew  out  of  the  suggestion 
showed  a  very  strong  opposition  to  the  pro- 
posal, and  while  pioneer  battalions  are  abso- 
lutely indispensable  in  undeveloped  countries 
such  as  India,  there  was  certainly  nothing  in  the 
performances  of  the  German  pioneer  compames 
in  1870  to  warrant  acceptance  of  the  dual 
organization  by  others. 

Another  point  to  be  noted  is  that  all  such 
branches  as  telegraphy,  air  service,  and  railway 
troops  were  in  Germany  completely  separated 
from  both  the  engineers  and  the  pioneers,  and 
formed  a  class  by  themselves  as  "  commiinica- 
tion  troops "  (verkehrstruppen).  How  feir 
these  communication  troops  entered  into  the 
composition  of  the  army  corps  the  diagrams 
above  indicate ;  the  remainder  were,  of  course, 
allotted  to  the  service  of  lines  of  communication. 
Cyclists,  other  than  those  employed  as  dispatch 
riders,  had  been  for  many  years  regarded  with 
disfavour  in  Germany.  A  short  time  before 
the  war,  however,  their  utility  for  certain 
combatant  services  was  at  last  admitted,  and 
detachments  (of  the  strength  of  a  small  com- 
pany) ^  were  formed  by  the  hght  infantry 
battalions  (jcigers)  as  infantry  supports  for  the 
advancea  cavalry  divisions. 

Signallers,  other  than  telegraphists,  were 
an  ill -developed  branch  in  Germany  as  else- 
where, for  it  was  only  in  the  British  Army  that 
visual  signalling  had  been  brought  to  any  high 
degree  of  usefulness.  In  Germany,  as  late  aa 
five  years  before  the  war,  flag  signalling  had  only 
been  used  for  communication  between  butts 
and  firing  points  at  target  practice. 

Supply  was  controlled  by  the  train  and  the 
staff  officers  representing  that  branch  of  the 
service  on  the  staffs  of  armies,  corps^  and  divi- 
sions. In  general,  local  resources  were  used  as  far 
as  possible,  but  there  was  of  cotirse  a  full  organiza- 
tion for  supply  from  the  rear,  and  in  the  soldiers* 
haversacks  there  were  two  or  more  "  iron " 
rations  as  emergency  supplies.  The  complete 
break  with  horsed  transport  traditions  that  had 
been  possible  for  Great  Britain,  with  her  small 
Army  and  her  large  resources  in  motor  lorries, 
was  not  so  for  Germany,  whose  mechanical 
transport,  vehicles,  in  spite  of  heavy  subsidiee 
from  the  State,  were  not  .numerous  enough -•  to 
deal  with  the  supplies  of  her  huge  forces  in 
the  British  way.  In  its  broadest  outline, 
therefore,  the  system  of  supply  from  the  rear 
was  a  construction  of  horsed  magazines  and 
"  road-trains "  (petrol  tractors  with  trucks) 
analogous  to  that  of  the  British  Army  between 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


105 


1905  and  1911,  with  the  exception — an  impor- 
tant one,  as  all  staff  officers  know — that  there 
seems  to  have  been  no  accumulation  of  stores 
at  an  "  advanced  depot,"  but  a  daily  dispatch 
to  one  or  more  changeable  "railheads."  Such 
magazines  as  there  were  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  the  fighting  area  were  "  field  depots "  for 
the  storage  of  requisitioned  supplies.  Infantry 
companies,  &c.,  were  furnished  with  travelling 
kitchens.  The  train  was  as  usual  divided  into 
baggage  sections  and  supply  portions,  and  the 
latter  were  organized  and  their  wagons  packed 
by  sections  of  one  day's  food  each. 

The  system  of  medical  aid  in  the  field  differed 
from  that  of  the  British  Army  chiefly  in/the 
greater  development  of  the  regimental  aid 
post  system  and  the  absence  of  the  clearing 
hospital,  which  in  the  British  system  was 
intended  to  free  the  field  ambulances  of  wounded 
at  the  earliest  possible  moment.  The  German 
system,  in  short,  was  one  of  field  hospitals  rather 
than  one  of  field  ambulances.*  But  the 
main  poirfp,  the  principle  of  evacuating  wounded 
as  fast  as  possible  and  placing  them  in  line  of 
communication  or  base  hospitals,  was  common 
to  both — indeed  to  all — armies.  The  ammuni- 
tion supply  of  the  infantry  was  secured  first 
by  company  ammunition  wag  )ns,  whose  contents 
• — as  in  the  British  service — were  brought  to  the 
firing  line  by  the  incon^ing  supports  and  reserves  ; 


•Field   hospitals  formed   part  of   the   trains   and   not,  as   did 
British  field  ambulances,  of  the  first-line  transport. 


PRINCE  OF  LIPPE. 

[Centrai  Ntwi. 

and  secondly  by  the  divisional  aramtinition 
columns*,-  which  formed  the  most  advanced 
portion  of  the  train,  half  a  day's  march  behind 
the   troops. 

The  organization  of  these  auxiliary  services 


♦Not  the  light  ammmiition  columns  of  the  artillery,  as  in  the 
British  service. 


GERMAN     INFANTRY    CELEBRATING    SEDAN    DAY    IN    BERLIN. 


[Central  News. 


106 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


was,  in  short,  minute  and  thorough.  But  it 
was  certainly  questionable  whether  it  was  up 
to  date. 

The  same  might  indeed  be  said  of  the  fighting 
troops  themselves.  Foreign  observers  who 
had  attended  the  Kaisermandver  year  after 
year  were  agreed  upon  the  fact  that  the  German 
Army  was  a  wonderful  machine.  But  many 
if  not  Eiost  of  •:ldifem  noted  at  the  same  time 


that  the  elements  of  the  machine — the  hvimaQ 
beings,  the  short-service  citizens — had  been 
sacrificed  to  mechanical  efficiency,  and  that 
if  the  fate  of  a  modem  battle,  as  all  asserted — 
Germans  as  emphatically  as  any — depended 
upon  the  qualities  of  the  individual  soldier, 
the  German  Army  would  fall  far  below  the 
reputation  for  invincibility  that  it  had  arrogated 
to  itself. 


CHAPTER  VII. 


THE  GERMAN  THEORY  OF  WAR. 


Historical  Development  Since  1870 — ^Prussianizing  the  Army — Large  and  Inefficient 
VERSUS  Small  and  Efficient  Armies — ^War  on  Two  Fronts  Determining  Factor — The  Battle 
WITH  "  No  Morrow  "  or  "  Battle  of  Reversed  Fronts  " — The  Napoleonic  and  1870  Examples 
— Close  Group  and  Deploying  of  Central  Reserves  Impossible — The  "  Tidal  Wave  " 
Envelopment — Moltke's  Practice — Objections  to  the  "  Tidal  Wave  "  Theory — ^Need  for 
Accurate  Information  as  to  Position  of  Enemy — ^Means  of  Obtaining  Information — Air- 
craft— ^UsE  OF  Cavalry  and  Machine  Guns — ^The  German  Railways — ^Necessity  of  a  Wide 
Strategic  Front  and  Consequeistt  Need  for  Invading  by  Luxemburg  and  Belgium — ^Move- 
ments OF  Corps  had  to  be  Simultaneous  and  According  to  a  Time-table — Danger  of 
Counterstrokes — ^Protective  Detachments — Initiative  of  Commanders  restricted — 
German  Tactics  Accompanying  the  "  Tidal  Wave."  , 


ON  land,  the  conflict  of  Germany 
with  France  and  Great  Britain  was 
a  conflict  not  only  of  principles 
and  of  men  and  of  weapons,  but  also 
one  between  different  ideas  on  the  methods  of 
conducting  military  operations.  Some  of  the 
differences  were  derived  from  and  others 
governed  the  principles,  the  men,  and  the  arms. 
If,  therefore,  we  are  to  understand  the  opera- 
tions of  the  war  aright,  it  is  necessary  to  realize 
the  nature  of  the  rival,  almost  opposed,  theories 
of  war  which  were  put  into  preuctice  in  those 
operations. 

It  has  already  been  remarked  that  the 
German  organization  stands  in  closer  relation 
to  the  German  doctrines  of  strategy  and  tactics 
than  the  French  organization  to  the  French 
principles.  For  in  Germany  the  Govemnxent 
through  its  police-like  bureaucracy  has  a  far 
greater  hold  on  the  individual  citizen  than  in 
France,  and  it  had  had  that  hold  for  so  long  that 
several  successive  army  systems  based  upon  it 
had  come  and  had  their  day  and  gone  again. 
In  other  words,  purely  strategic  and  tactical 
considerations  could  be  allowed  for  in  the  forms 
and  framework  of  the  Army  to  an  extent  that 
woiild  not  have  been  possible  in  a  community 
less    wealthy    (like    Japan)    or    one    more    in- 


dividualized (as  in  the  case  of  France),  or  one 
in  which  defence  problems  were  manifold  in 
kind  and  varying  in  degree  (as  in  Great  Britain). 
Germany's  military  problem,  on  however  great 
a  scale  it  seemed  to  be  set,  was  in  reality  a 
simple  one,  and  simplicity  and  power  were 
the  main  elements  of  the  military  system 
adopted  to  solve  it.  Nevertheless,  traditions 
and  matters  of  external  and  internal  policy 
had  their  effect  here  as  elsewhere  upon  the 
military  system,  and  it  was  not  a  slight  one. 

To  begin  with,  1866  and  1870  had  imbued  the 
German  Army  and  the  German  people  at  large 
with  a  conviction  that,  in  general,  their  organi- 
zition — a  single-line  army  which  was  a  com- 
promise between  the  regular  professional  type 
and  the  national  miUtia  type — was  that  most 
suited  to  the  circiunstances  of  a  European  War 
of  the  future,  and  the  fact  that  other  nations 
copied  their  system  more  or  less  slavishly  after 
1870  made  of  this  conviction  a  creed  of  self- 
satisfaction.  When  from  time  to  time  German 
officers  preached  that  the  Empire  was  in  danger, 
it  was  not  in  the  belief  that  matters  were  really 
in  that  case,  but  with  the  intention  of  improving 
still  more  upon  their  formidable  war  engine. 
The  bible  of  this  tradition  was  the  Official 
History  of  the  1870  war.     But  the  authorities 


107 


108 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


GENERAL     GALLIENI. 
Military  Governor  of  Paris  in  1914. 

and  observant  officers  of  all  ranks  who  had  been 
through  that  war  knew  well  that  the  army  of 
1870  was  unperfect  in  many  vital  points,  and,  as 
a  first  reform,  the  authorities  set  about  imposing 
the  Prussian  military  institutions  upon  the 
South  German  contingents,  in  the  name  of 
simplicity,  and  sous-entendu  in  that  of  power, 
since  it  was  not  only  the  want  of  homogeneity 
but  also  the  lack  of  discipline  and  "drive" 
in  battle  that  had  made  those  contingents  so 
feeble.  The  process  of  forming  the  homogeneous 
army  was  neither  easy  nor  pleasant,  for 
it  involved  putting  strict  officially-minded 
Pnissians  in  the  midst  of  easy-going  South- 
erners as  comrades  in  field  and  mess ;  and  in  one 
respect  it  was  even  necessary  to  infringe  upon 
the  historic  territorial  system  of  recruitment, 
since  it  was  obviously  impossible  to  put  Hano- 
verians en  masse  into  the  X,  Corps,  or  Alsatians 
in  the  XV. 

This  process  of  Prussianizing  the  Army  was 
practically  completed  in  about  30  years,  and 
thus,  when  the  Great  War  came,  it  had  taken 
effect  for  15  years  or  so. 

There  were  yet  other  things  to  be  done. 
The  tactical  results  of  1870 — the  first  war  in 
which  breech-loader  met  breech-loader — were 
hard  to  digest,  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  for 
many  years  no  two  groups  of  officers  held 
exactly  the  same  opinions  on  the  most  serious 


questions  of  tactics.  No  authority  in  the  world 
has  less  liking  for  chaos  than  the  Prussian, 
but  authority  was  powerless  to  deal  with  the 
men  of  1870 — whom  it  had  so  well  taught  to 
exercise  "  initiative  " — and  the  old  1812-1848 
drill -book  was  retained  for  parade  purposes 
till  1888,  while  outside  the  limits  of  the  barrack 
square  all  was  opinion  and  controversy.  When 
homogeneity  of  organization  and  type  was 
fairly  well  completed,  homogeneity  in  the 
tactical  sphere  was  still  far  distant.  Each 
master-mind  evolved  his  own  tactical  theories, 
and  the  rest  followed  agape.  Tn  those  days 
there  were  giants — Bronsart,  Verdy  du  Vernois, 
Meckel,   Scherff,   Boguslawski,  Hoenig. 

The  phenomena  which  these  men  set  them- 
selves to  examine  were  the  same  for  each, 
the  battlefield  phenomena  of  1870,  the  "  dis- 
solving "  effect  of  rifle  fire,  and  above  all  the 
problem  of  preventing,  under  the  new  condi- 
tions of  warfare,  the  wholesale  skulking  of 
un wounded  men.* 

Time  after  time  in  the  earlier  battles  one- 
third  and  more  of  the  men  nominally  engaged 
had  been  missing  as  vinwounded  stragglers — 
runaways  in  some  cases,  but  chiefly  skulkers 
who,  after  lying  down  to  fu-e,  were  "  deaf  to 
the  call  of  the  whistle  "  when  their  comrades 
rose  and  pushed  forward,  and  who  lay  cowering 
or,  worse  still,  kept  up  a  fusillade  against  all 
troops  that  approached  them.  The  problem 
of  these  "  squatting  hares "  (Driickeberger) 
dominates  the  military  thought  of  the  eighties 
and  nineties,  and  at  the  close  of  this  epoch  two 
broad,  ideas,  understood  rather  than  expressed 
in  words,  had  taken  shape  in  men's  minds. 
One  was  that,  human  nature  being  human 
nature,  the  only  way  in  which  to  ensure  that 
all  the  available  brave  men  were  brought  into 
action  was  to  bring  into  the  army  every  possible 
man,  even  at  the  cost  of  shortening  the  term 
of  service  and  lowering  the  physical  standards, 
since  no  test  really  told  except  the  psychic 
test  of  battle  itself.  Tactically  (according  to 
the  supporters  of  tliis  school  of  thought)  the 
mass  was  to  be  handled  in  the  simplest  possible 
fashion — quietly  deployed  in  fvill  strength  at 
the  outset,  and  then  at  the  proper  moment 
launched  in  fvdl  sudden  violence  to  drive 
through  to  victory  by  its  inherent  worth  alone. 
All  manoeuvres  and  dispositions  were  to  be 
made  in  view  of  the  one  purpose  of  giving  effect 
to  the  will  power  of  those  private  soldiers  who 
possessed  it.  Of  the  rest  some  would  be 
carried  on  by  their  brave    comrades,    and    as 


*Massendriickeberoertum  is    the    technical  term  invented  by  the 
Germans  tor  this  phenomenon. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


109 


for  the  remainder,  who  enciimbered  the  battle- 
field, matters  would  be  no  worse  after  all  than 
in  1870. 

The  other  school,  or  rather  the  other  tendency 
(for  the  word  school  is  too  definite  and  formal;, 
had  as  its  starting  point  the  principles  of 
Frederick  the  Great ;  it  was  proposed  to 
sacrifice  quantity  to  quality  and  initiative  to 
hard  discipline,  and  to  seek  victory  with  a 
smaller  army  trained  'to  mechanical  per- 
fection. For  the  supporters  of  this  school 
the  secret  of  victory  was  speed  of  onset  coupled 
with  crushing  volleys*  during  the  advance. 
At  the  same  time  those  leaders  who  knew 
1870  from  the  company  and  battalion- 
point  of  view,  and  were  now  risen  to 
higher  rank,  no  longer  influenced  the 
company  and  battalion  training  upon 
which  controversy  then  centred.  Younger 
men  had  taken  their  places,  and  it  was  these 
who  found  themselves  in  the  superior  commands 
when  the  war  of  1914  broke  out.  Below  them 
again  was  one  generation  after  another,  from 
major  to  subaltern,  which  knew  nothing  of 
1870  at  first  hand,  and  in  their  case  experience 
of  the  realities  of  the  battlefield  no  longer 
operated  as  a  check  upon  attempts  to 
harden  extreme  theories  into  practice.  Those 
"  realities "  were  indeed  brought  into  the 
light  by  the  published  works  of  Meckel,  Hoenig, 
and  others,  but  they  were  regarded  by  some 
of  the  new  generation  as  an  almost  treasonable 
attack  upon  the  sacred  and  also  profitable 
legends  of  1870. 

Those  who  looked  upon  them  calmly,  how- 
ever, tended  to  regard  them  as  proving  the 
case  for  the  small,  iron  quality-army.  But 
the  controversy,  as  a  controversy,  entered  on 
a  new  lease  of  life  owing  to  the  introduction  of 
the  magazine  rifle  with  its  smokeless  powder ; 
when  first  introduced  it  threatened  to  chastise 
with  scorpions  the  errors  and  weaknesses  that  the 
rifles  of  1870  had  only  beaten  with  whips. 
Some  held  that  the  Frederician  discipline  was 
more  than  ever  necessary,  and  others  that 
nothing  but  the  thin-swarm  method  of  attack 
could  cope  with  the  fire  power  of  the  new 
weapons. 

But  the  former  class  had  the  prestige  of  war 
experience  and  the  latter,  with  few  exceptions, 
had  not,  and  the  theory  of  the  thick-volley 
firing  line  was  practically  in  possession  of  the 
field,  when  a  new  set  of  conditions — this 
time  political — arose  to  confirm  it. 

Before  the  time  of  which  we  are  speaking  the 
game  of  diplomacy  had  been  played  between  the 

•Not  literally  the  old  Frederician  volleys,  but  what  ar»  now 
called  "  bursts  of  Are." 


GENERAL    D'AMADE. 

[//.  Walter  Banutt., 

league  of  the  Three  Emperors  and  the  Tnple 
Alliance,  with  Bismarck  as  "  honest  broker,"  and 
a  war  with  France  was  the  focus  to  which  all 
ways  of  German  military  activity  converged. 
But  at  that  moment  of  military  development 
the  Franco-Russian  understanding  hardened 
into  alhance  and  Germany  was  faced  with  a 
new  problem — the  "  war  on  two  fronts  " — • 
one  to  which  the  Austrian  and  Italian 
alliances  were  no  more  than  a  contribution  or 
aid.  The  shape  that  German  strategy  and 
war  doctrine  was  to  take,  then,  depended 
chiefly  upon  the  time  which  the  immense 
Russian  Empire  would  need  to  bring  it3 
forces  into  action.  Hitherto  this  had  been  in- 
ordinately long,  but  now  French  capital  was 
employed  for  Rvissian  strategic  railways,  and 
the  Russian  Army,  instead  of  being  a  peace 
army  distributed  through  the  whole  Empire, 
became  a  frontier  army,  with  seven-eighths  of 
its  strength  permanently  stationed  in  Poland 
and  the  Balkan  provinces.  The  danger  then 
was  really  simultaneous  action  of  France  and 
Russia  on  the  two  frontiers.  But  this  danger 
was  rather  in  the  future  than  in  the  present.  Many 
years  must  elapse  before  Russian  mobihzation 
could  be  "  speeded  up  "  to  anything  approach- 
ing that  of  France  or  Germany,  and  there  was, 
therefore,  so  far  as  the  generation  of  1890- 
1910   was   concerned,   an   appreciable  interval 


110 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


between,  the  French  side  of  the  possible  war  and 
the  Russian.  That  interval  it  was  proposed 
to  use  for  the  crushing  of  France,  whose  mobiliza- 
tion period  was  two  days  longer  than  the 
German,*  and  an  army  that  could  overwhelm 
France  in  a  month  or  six  weeks  and  still  be  fit 
afterwards  to  deal  with  the  Russians  had  to  be 
an  army  of  high  quality  and  training. 

But  if  the  conditions  of  foreign  politics 
favoured  the  supporters  of  the  quality-army, 
those  at  home  told  almost  as  much  in 
favoior  of  the  quantity-army.  While  the 
population  had  been  rapidly  growing,  the 
proportion  of  the  recruit  contingent  taken  in 
annually  had  not  increased.  The  "  universal 
service "  theory  had  become  a  farce  in 
practice,  since  not  much  more  than 
one-third  of  the  available  recruits  were 
taken,  and  the  others  were  allowed  to  go  scot 
free.  The  resiilt  was,  on  the  one  hand, 
a  separation  of  army  and  nation  and  an  unfair 
ruethod  of  recniiting  which  was  creating  dis- 
content and  disaffection,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  too  few  men  were  undergoing  the  educa- 
tion of  military  discipline  which  the  Government 
regarded  as  its  safeguard.  But  unless  the  peace 
establishment  of  the  Army  was  considerably 
increased,    which    was    impossible,    the    only 


•  Owing  chiefly  to  the  fact  that  the  French  Anny  was  recruited 
generally,  the  regiments  drawuig  their  recruits  without  regard  to 
territorial  connexions,  whereas  in  Germany  the  recruiting  system 
was  (save  in  case  of  Hanoverians,  Alsatians,  &c.)  strictly  local, 
all  reservists,  therefore,  living  within  easy  reach  of  their  regiments. 
The  German  system  was  tried  in  France  in  the  regime  of  General 
Andre,  but  was  a  failure. 


method  of  passing  more  men  through  the  ranks 
was  the  reduction  of  the  term  of  colour  service, 
and  accordingly  the  two  years'  term  was  in- 
troduced instead  of  the  old  three  years',  except 
for  cavalry  and  certain  other  branches.  These 
conditions,  of  coiirse,  tended  to  support  the 
adherents  of  the  quantity  army. 

But  both  the  external  influences  which  made 
for  the  quality  army  and  the  internal  which 
produced  the  quantity  army  were  equally  power- 
ful, for  their  needs  were  equally  imperative. 
And  so  the  attempt  was  made  to  produce  the 
qu8uitity  army  by  conscription  and  to  make 
it,  when  produced,  into  a  quality  army  by  cease- 
less, ruthless  intensity  of  training. 

From  these  antecedents  and  in  these  condi- 
tions the  modem  German  doctrine  of  war  grew 
up.  Before  it  came  to  its  test  in  1914,  however, 
the  army  which  was  to  be  its  instrument  had 
begun  over  again  the  cycle  of  progress.  The 
population  continued  to  increase,  while  the  Army 
strength  and  the  recruit  contingent  to  furnish 
it  remained  ranch  the  same.  Even  with  two 
years'  service — a  minimum  that  Grermany, 
with  her  internal  political  difficulties,  dared  not 
reduce — ^by  about  1905  less  than  half  the  able- 
bodied  men  were  being  taken  into  the  Army. 
More  and  more,  then,  the  notion  of  the  small 
quality  army  was  gaining  groixnd,  while  to 
produce  it  on  a  two  years'  term  meant  an 
intensive  training  which  dulled  the  men  by 
its  monotone  intensity.  But  Russia,  mean- 
while,  though  temporarily  put  out   of   action 


-^^^ibi 

\ 

ft 

*^ 

k 

^ 

L    ^1! 

\ 

.■^fc'^^ 

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u 

^R 

■i 

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m 

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i 

^ 

^-m 

tJL3 

1 

THE    KAISER    INSTRUCTING    HIS    GENERALS. 


THE    TIME!S    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Ill 


by  her  Japanese  war,  began — ^from  1910 
especially — ^to  organize  not  only  her  troops 
but  her  administrative  services,  and  General 
Sukhomlinov's  reforms  rapidly  brought  the 
day  nearer  upon  which  Russia  could  feel  sure 
of  concentrating  all  her  forces  in  three  weeks. 
Thus  approached  the  really  simultaneous  war 
on  two  fronts,  not  to  be  met  by  two  successive 
blows,  however  fierce  they  might  be  and  however 
highly-tempered  the  army  that  delivered  them. 
The  limit  was  reached  in  1912,  when  the  rise 
of  Serbia  and  Greece  made  it  apparent  that 
something  less  than  the  whole  Austrian  Army 
would  be  free  to  serve  in  Galicia.  A  halt 
was  called  in  expenditure  on  the  Fleet.  Money 
was  voted  to  the  Army  and  the  peace  establish- 
ments enormously  expanded  -with  a  view 
(1)  to  reducing  the  num.ber  of  reservists  required 
to  complete  the  "  active,"  or  highly-tempered, 
army  to  war  strength  ;  and  (2)  to  providing^ a 
cadre  of  active  officers  and  non-commissioned 
officers  for  the  reserve  formations. 

The  development  of  these  reserve  formations, 
which  has  already  been  alluded  to  in  an  earlier 
chapter,  was  the  most  important  feature  of 
recent  military  reforms  in  Germany.  Viewed 
in  one  aspect,  it  was  a  partial  return  to  the 
principle  of  two -line  armies,  discredited  since 
1870  ;  viewed  from  another,  it  was  an  attempt 
to  secixre  the  working  of  the  previous  war-plan 
and  war-theory  by  the  old  army,  by  keeping  the 
ring  clear  for  it,  imder  new  conditions  that  had 
not  been  allowed  for  in  the  original  scheme. 
It  may  be  assumed,  then,  that  the  blow  upon 
France  was  dehvered  in  accordance  with  the 
doctrines  accepted  and  the  plans  prepared  in 
accordance  with  them. 

The  exact  terms  of  the  doctrine  or  creed  are 
unknown.  All  that  had  become  known  about 
it  before  the  war  was  that  there  was  a  confiden- 
tial "  instructions  for  higher  commanders," 
revised  in  1910,  distinct  from  the  Field  Service 
Regulations  of  the  Army.  That  being  so,  the 
only  foundations  for  what  were  necessarily 
guesses  were  (a)  manoeuvre  practice  ;  (b)  trend 
of  opinions  in  German  military  literature  ;  and 
(c)  the  location  of  the  strategic  railway  stations. 
These  however,  taken  together,  afforded  plenty 
of  trustworthy  evidence,  and  the  character  of 
the  doctrine  itself,  its  plainness  and  its  scorn 
of  artifice  and  variants  indicated  that  the  facts 
could  be  trusted  as  premises  for  a  conclusion. 

Its  aim  was  the  "  battle  with  no  morrow,"  the 
complete  and  self-sufficing  decisive  victory.  As  we 
have  seen,  temporizing  in  any  form  had  become 
less  and  less  possible  as  against  France  in  pro- 
portion as  the  Russian  mobilization  had  become 
more  rapid.     If,  then,  a  new  Sedan  had  been 


GENERAL    DE    GASTELNAU. 

[Pitrrg  Petit. 

the  ideal  of  the  generation  of  Verdy  du  Vernois 
and  Bronsart,  Moltke's  confidential  assistants, 
how  much  more  was  it  that  of  the  newer  genera- 
tion whose  problem  demanded  speed  above 
all  else,  and  whose  manoeuvre  experience  had 
not  told  them  the  limits  imposed  by  human 
nature  upon  the  process  of  speeding-up,  nor 
brought  home  the  fact  that  in  war  an  army 
marches  not  to  the  "  stand-fast "  of  a  field 
day  but  to  the  strain  of  battle. 

Policy  thiis  demanding  the  single  decisive 
victory  at  the  earliest  possible  date,  strategy, 
called  upon  to  find  the  means  of  achieving  it, 
answered  with  the  "  battle  on  reversed  fronts.* 
If  the  German  Army  could  place  itself  in  rear 
of  the  French,  the  French  woiold  ipso  Jacto  be 
in  rear  of  the  Germans — that  is,  in  each  case, 
the  army  would  be  cut  off  from  its  mother 
coimtry.  Obviously  such  a  battle  would  be 
decisive  enough,  since  the  retreat  of  the  beaten 
side  into  hostile  territory  instead  of  friendly 
would  be  sheer  dissolution,  not  to  mention  that 
the  descent  of  one  side  upon  the  enemy's  rear 
would  inevitably  break  up  or  capture  his  wagon 
trains  of  all  sorts.  It  is  true  that  this  is  a 
double-edged  weapon,  for  the  Germans  would 
expose  their  wagons — or  more  strictly  speaking 
their    Unes    of    communications — to  the   same 

fato.    But  it  was  held  that  success  in-thig 


112 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GERMAN     FIELD    ARTILLERY. 


[Central  News. 


extremely  dangerous  game  would  go  to  the 
side  which  showed  the  most  desperate  resolu- 
tion and  driving  iorce,  and  compelled  the 
enemy  to  submit  to  it,  or  to  try  to  evade  it, 
rather  than  to  answer  it  with  its  like.  German 
authorities  spoke  of  the  battle  with  reversed 
fronts  as  the  purest  form  of  strategy — as  indeed 
it  is,  for  it  plays  for  nothing  less  than  the 
annihilation  of  one  side  or  of  the  other — but 
though,  with  Von  der  Goltz,  they  went  on  to 
assert  that  such  strategy  needed  the  German 
Army  to  execute  it,  the  fact  was  rather  that 
the  German  Army  needed  such  strategy. 
Exceptional  circumst£Uices  call  for  strong 
measures. 

But  whereas  in  Napoleon's  days  it  was 
quite  feasible,  with  a  compact  aimy  in  a  theatre 
of  war  spacioTis  relatively  to  the  army's  axes, 
witliin  it,  to  bring  about  a  battle  with  fronts 
reversed  as  at  Marengo,  Ulm,  and  Jena,  in 
the  modem  war  of  citizen  masses  its  achieve- 
ment was  by  no  means  so  easy.  In  1870  the 
great  battle  of  Gravelotte-St.  Privat  was 
fought  with  fronts  reversed,  bu*  it  was  not 
the  Prussian  armies  as  a  whole  that  brought 
about  the  decision,  but  the  few  brigades  that 
were  still  in  hand  after  the  French  right  flank 
had  been  f ovind  and  their  whole  front  engaged. 
In  the  case  of  Sedan  it  was  only  the  forward 


plunge  of  McMahon's  army  that  enabled  the 
Crown  Prince  to  get  in  his  rear ;  far  from 
deUberately  nxanceuvring  for  the  purpose,  the 
German  Army  III.  simply  found  itself  in  a 
position  to  cut  the  Marshal  from  Paris,  and 
did  so.* 

The  possibiUty  of  a  group  of  armies  on  the 
modern  scale  passing  completely  rovind  another 
similar  army  was,  to  say  the  least,  doubtful, 
and  the  problem  had  to  be  tackled  in  a  different 
waj .  Inst-ead  of  by  passing  round,  it  was  to 
be  £ichieved  by  advancing  in  a  long  deployed 
line,  the  flanks  of  which  would,  it  was  expected, 
lap  round  those  of  the  more  closely  grouped 
enemy,  wherever  he  was  met  with.  This 
theory  of  envelopment  was  the  basis  of  all 
modem  Germaa  strategy. 

Envelopment  is  simply  the  surrounding  of 
the  enemy.  Supposing  that  enemy  to  be 
stationary  (as  the  French  Were  at  Sedan)  there 
are  two  waj'^s  of  bringing  this  about — (a)  by 
advancing  in  a  close  group  imtil  the  enemy  is 
met  and  then  deploying  the  central  reserves 
out  to  one  or  both  flanks  so  as  to  swing  them 
in  upon  the  enemy's  rear  ;  (b)  by  starting 
from  a  very  wide  front  and  gradually  converging 

*The  operative  strategy  of  the  Sedan  Campaign  was  far  from 
being  as  simple  as  this,  and  still  repays  the  closest  study  as  a  piece 
of  "  start  work."  But  as  regards  theory  alone,  the  above  generaliza- 
tion is  correct  enough. 


GERMAN  MEDICAL  CORPS  AND  FIELD  KITCHEN  CROSSING  A  PONTOON  BRIDGE. 

lOttral  Ntws 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


lia 


Concentration 


a 


o 


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Q. 


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03 


lU^O 


o- 


o- 


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Marching  oF^  r— - 

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Centre 


n 


■a  \  ^.WLnS. 


All  iq  Line 


mng    H  I 

H  I 


Development 
l/l/ing   _(        ;  oF  the\/\lings 


-D-D  I 


-D 
■D 
-D 


Qentre 


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■D-D  Y 


Wing 


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Note  how  the  outer 
Corps  on  the  right 
is  Sd ving  time  by 
crossing  tlie  tail 
oFthe  other 


{^"s 


PHASES    OF    A   GERMAN    "  ENVELOPMENT "    MOVEMENT. 


114 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


GERMAN  INFANTRY  ABOUT  TO  ATTACK. 


[Central  News. 


upon  the  enemy's  assumed  position.  Both 
methods  had  been  tried  on  several  occasions,  the 
first  tactically  and  on  a  small  scale  at  Worth 
in  1870  and  strategically  on  a  big  scale  at 
Mukden  ;  the  second  in  1866,  1870,  and  at 
Liao-Yang  in  1904.  Each  had  successes  and 
also  failures  to  its  account.  But  with  armies 
of  the  size  that  a  Franco-German  conflict 
would  bring  into  line  the  first  method  was 
almost,  if  not  quite,  impossible  owing  to  the 
time  which  the  massed  central  reserves  wovild 
take  to  work  away  to  the  flanks  before  they  could 
overlap  the  enemy  and  swing  in  upon  his  rear. 
The  only  form  of  offensive  in  which  it  could  be 
employed  was,  in  fact,  the  counter-oSensive 
which  could  be  initiated  on  the  basis  of  a  faiily 
clear  military  situation,  and  the  counter- 
offensive    and    even    the    delayed      offensive 


A  CUIRASSIER  WITH  CARBINE. 


were  forms  of  war  in  which  the  Germans, 
situated  as  they  were  with  respect  to  Russia, 
could  not  have  indulged  in  if  they  had  wished 
to  do  so. 

The  German  envelopment,  then,  would  start 
froni  a  very  wide  base  on  the  frontier  itself — 
or  rather  on  the  Hne  of  railheads  where  the 
troops  were  detrained — and  thence  converge 
upon  the  enemy.  It  is  questionable  whether 
Moltke  himself  ever  accepted  this  principle 
in  toto.  In  1866  a  strategic  deployment  of  this 
kind  was  forced  upon  him  by  the  lie  of  the 
Prussian  railways,  and  many  were  the  risks 
run  in  carrying  it  forward  to  an  issue  of  de- 
cisive victory.  In  1870  the  tendency  to  envelop 
certainly  appeared  on  every  occasion,  but  it 
was  coupled  with  constant  striving  on  Moltke's 
part  to  keep  his  forces  in  hand  and  to  avoid 
over -extension.  His  ideal,  if  he  had  one — and 
he  himself  defined  strategy  as  a  "  system  of 
expedients " — was  a  hne  of  closely  grouped 
masses  each  so  far  separated  from  its  neighbours 
as  to  have  elbow  room  not  only  for  plain  de- 
ployment for  battle  but  for  manoeuvre  as  well. 
But  those  who  regarded  themselves  as  the 
inheritors  of  the  Moltke  tradition  based  them- 
selves frankly  upon  the  dispositions  of  1866, 
which  only  came  to  a  happy  issue  through  the 
enemy's  internal  dissensions,  and  of  August, 
1870,  which  completely  failed  in  the  attempt  to 
envelop  the  French  Army  on  the  Saar.  In 
1914,  then,  there  wa,s  more  "system"  than 
"  expedients."  In  other  words,  the  stemdard 
enveloping  strategy  was  preconceived — based 
upon  peace-time  studies  and  preconceived 
ideas  as  to  how  the  enemy  must  a^it  according 
to  the  rules  of  the  game. 

As  Moltke  remarked,  "One  must  always 
credit  the  enemy  with  doing  the  right  thing." 

But  such  a  saying,  axiomatic  as  it  looks, 
must  on  no  account  be  treated  as  an  axiom 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


115 


It  was  all  very  well  for  Moltke  to  say  so,  but 
he  himself  had  on  more  than  one  grave  occasion, 
in  1866  and  1870,  seen  his  best-laid  schemes 
crumble  to  nothing  because  the  enemy  did  not 
take  the  correct  military  course — as  it  appeared 
to  Moltke  on  the  data  before  him.  From  this 
it  is  no  great  step  to  the  belief  that 
the  enemy  must  do  as  our  best  general 
tells  him,  and  the  expression  of  this  belief 
is  the  doctrine  that  by  rapidity  and  violence  of 
action  we  can  compel  an  enemy  to  conform  to 
our  own  moves.  That  doctrine  and  the 
doctrine  of  envelopment  were  the  two  principal 
articles  of  the  German  military  faith  before 
the  war. 

Their  connexion  it  is  important  to  realize.  It 
is  true  that  with  the  small  armies  and  slow  travel- 
ling of  Napoleon's  day  the  seizure  of  the  initia- 
tive by  sudden  violence  was  qmte  possible  in 
combination  with  a  close,  deep  grouping  of 
the  forces.  But  modern  conditions  of  national 
recruiting  and  railway  transport  had,  as  we 
have  already  observed,  made  this  form  the 
instrvunent  of  the  reserved  counter-attack.  The 
side  which  aimed  at  the  speediest  decision 
could  make  no  use  of  a  form  in  which  the 
depth  of  the  army  during  its  advance  was  five 
or  six  days'  marches.     The  deployed  Une,  or 


% 

\' 

I.DAY. 

.imyM^ 

^ 

(B.) 


•  tidal  wave,'  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  form  that 
gave  the  minimxma  depth  for  a  given  force, 
hence  a  minimum  time  for  deploying  to  the 
front  for  battle,  and  consequently  the  speediest 
decision  one  way  or  the  other.  By  the  same 
token,  it  gave  the  widest  possible  front  for  the 
given  force,  and,  therefore,  the  greatest  possible 
chances  of  overlapping  the  enemy's  front  and 
so  of  ensuring  by  envelopment  the  completest 
decision. 

On  the  other  hand,  an  army  deployed  to  its 
greatest  possible  lateral  extension  was  irre- 
trievably committed  to  the  direction  then 
given  it.  It  could  not  regroup  itself  to  meet 
new  situations  on  account  of  its  very  length. 
If  the  point  at  which  the  enemy  was  met 
lay  upon  one  flank  of  the  line  (diagram  a) 
instead  of  at  the  centre,  as  had  been  presumed 


GERMAN    WAR    ROCKET    PHOTOGRAPHY. 

The  Camera  is  fitted  to  a  parachute  which  is  fired  into  the  air  like  a  rocket. 
1.  Sighting.  2.  The  Rocket  fired.  3.  One  of  the  photographs  obtained. 


iNtws  Illustrations. 


116 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY     OF    THE     WAR. 


GERMAN    CAVALRY    TAKING    UP    POSITIONS. 


[Central  News, 


(diagram  6),  the  attempted  envelopment  might, 
and  with  an  active  adversary  would  almost 
certainly,  come  too  late.  If,  again,  the  enemy's 
group  lay  completely  outside  the  sweep  of  the 
enveloper's  flanks,  the  latter  would  have  struck 
the  blow  in  the  air,  exposed  his  flank  and  rear 
before  reaching  the  enemy's,  and,  in  short, 
squandered  the  assets  of  his  initiative  to  no 
piu-pose.  If,  again,  the  enemy  were  after  all 
in  the  area  presumed,  the  enveloper  would  have 
no  small  difficulty  in  so  timing  his  marches  as 
to  achieve  his  purpose,  for  the  enemy,  retarding 
his  advance  by  reeirguards,  wovild  detain  some 
of  the  oncoming  columns  far  longer  than 
others. 

These  disadvantages  of  the  enveloping 
method  being  recognized,  let  us  see  how  the 
side  that  intends  to  adopt  it  can  neutraUze,  or 
attempt  to  neutraUze,  them. 

It  is  clear,  first  of  all,  that  everj'thing,  or 
nearly  everything,  depends  on  the  accviracy  of 
the  forecast  which  determines  the  direction 
of  the  line's  advance.  A  part  of  this  informa- 
tion can  be  collected,  classified,  and  studied 
in  peace.  ,  The  remainder  must  be  observed 
during  the  course  of  the  operations  themselves, 
either  by  one  or  more  of  the  following  means  : 
a  detachment  of  all  arms  carrying  out  a 
"  reconnaissance  in  force,"  and  holding  the 
enemy,  when  found,  long  enough  to  ensure  that 
the  information  gleaned  wiU  be  still  vaUd  at 
the  time  of  the  action  based  upon  it ;  or  cavalry 
masses  flung  out  far  ahead  to  ascertain  the 
generfd  outline  and  apparent  movements  of  the 


hostile  group ;  or  air  reconnaissance  ;  or, 
lastly,  the  reports  of  spies,  newspaper  checkers, 
and  other  individual  agents.  Practically  all 
these  means  are  employed  by  all  armies,  for 
information  is  of  very  high  importance  for  the 
working  of  any  form  of  strategy  ;  it  is  in  the 
relative  utility  of  these  means  that  we  find 
divergencies  of  doctrine.  Air  reconnaissance 
being  an  unknown  factor,  no  definite  weight 
could  be  attached  to  it  before  the 
war,  for,  considering  the  magnitude  of 
the  stakes,  it  would  have  been  sheer  gam- 
bling to  allow  great  resolutions  to  depend  upon 
aircraft  reconaissance.  Apart  from  the  fact  that 
both  airships  and  aeroplanes  were  hardly  out  of 
the  experimental  or  embryonic  stage  of  their 
development,  aircraft,  even  if  they  had  been 
perfect,  could  not  have  seen  into  the  mind  of 
the  hostile  general,  or  taken  prisoners  with 
tell-tale  regimental  numbers  on  their  buttons  and 
caps  and  divisional  colours  on  their  shoulder- 
straps.  Spy  reports,  &c.,  on  the  other  hand, 
were  neither  more  nor  less  trustworthy  than 
they  had  been  in  past  wars  ;  they  were,  in  fact, 
a  constraint  for  all  armies.  The  divergencies 
of  method  referred  to  lay  in  the  relative  im- 
portance assigned  to  the  detachment  of  all 
arms  and  to  the  cavalry  mass  for  the  service  of 
information.  In  France  and  Great  Britain, 
as  we  shall  see,  the  two  were  combined  ;  in 
Germany,  however,  it  may  safely  be  said  that 
the  mixed  detachment  was  anathema,  and 
that  the  securing  of  information  during  the 
Operations  was  the  task  of  the  cavalry  alone. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


Ill 


In  spite  of  the  legend  of  the  "  ubiquitous 
Uhlan,"  expert  opinion  was  agreed,  even  in 
Germany,  that  the  performancss  of  the  re- 
connoitring cavah-y  in  1870  were  mediocre. 
In  France,  after  the  revival  of  Napoleonic 
studies  had  shown  that  even  the  famous 
squadrons  of  Mura^  could  not  give  the  Emperor 
a  firm  basis  for  his  manoeuvres,  it  was  held  that 
the  capacity  of  cavalry  for  useful  strategic 
reconnaissance  was  limited  by  the  nature  of  the 
arm  itself.  "  Cavalry  can  reconnoitre,  but  it 
cannot  hold,"*  that  is,  by  the  time  that  the 
cavalry  reports  had  reached  headquarters  and 
action  had  been  taken  on  them  they  were  out 
of  date  and  misleading,  since  the  enemy  was 
meantime  free  to  move.  In  Germany,  on  the 
contrary,  it  was  considered  that  cavalry  reports, 
transmitted  with  all  the  speed  that  wireless 
and  motor-cars  made  possible,  were  good 
enough  to  goon.  Certainly  the  German  form  of 
strategic  deployment  admitted  of  no  other, 
since  the  attempt  to  obtain  information  by  large 
detachments  of  all  arms  would  be  contrary  to 
the  principle  of  the  simultaneous  onset  of  all 
parts  of  the  line,  to  which  allusion  will  presently 
be  made. 

•Colonel  F.  N.  Maude,  C.B. 


At  the  same  time,  attributing  the  inability  of 
the  old-fashioned  cavalry  to  penetrate  an 
enemy's  screen  to  their  feeble  fire-power 
(though  nowhere  was  the  shock  action  ot 
cavalry  held  in  higher  honour  than  in  Germany), 
the  Germans  did  their  utmost  to  increase  it ; 
carbine,  pistol,  horse  artillery  gun  were  all 
developed  and  made  use  of,  and  it  is  significant 
that  the  machine-gun,  long  regarded  with 
suspicion  on  the  Continent,  was  first  adopted 
by  Germany  as  a  fire  auxiliary  for  her  cavalry.* 
At  one  time,  1912-13,  there  was  even  a  pro- 
posal to  give  the  trooper  a  bayonet,  and  finally 
cyclists — another  arm  that  German  military 
opinion  had  formerly  thought  useless — were 
grouped  into  companies  for  the  fire-support  of 
the  cavalry. f  These  innovations  might  be 
looked  upon  as  a  tentative  concession  to  the 
notion  of  the  all-arms  detachment,  but  it  is 
more  accurate  to  regard  them  as  attempts  to 
fortify  the  one-arm  reconnaissance  by  enabling 
it  to  keep  to  its  main  task.  J     This  main  task, 


•Infantry  machine  guns  came  later — indeed,  the  formation  et 
Infantry  machine  gun  companies  was  only  just  completed  at  the 
outbreak  of  war. 

tit  was  also  proposed  to  attach  the  light  infantry  (Jager)  battalions 
to  the  cavalry. 

Jin  battle  the  Germans,  lilce  other  Powers,  used  their  cavalry 
to  contribute  to  the  volume  of  fire  as  well  as  for  shock  action. 


IN     THE    KRUPP    WORKS    AT    ESSEN. 


[L.Nui. 


118 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


FRENCH     FORTRESS    ARTILLERY. 
Charging  a  95  mm.  gun. 

as  we  have  seen,  was  the  discovery  of  the 
enemy's  grouping.  As  a  rule,  the  defeat 
of  the  enemy's  main  bodies  of  horse  was  a 
necessary  preliminary,  but  in  all  cases  the  main 
body  of  the  German  cavalry  was  meant  to 
pierce  the  protective  cordon  which  sur- 
rounded the  enemy  and  to  hold  the  gap  for  the 
safe  retvu*n  of  the  patrols  that  were  immediately 
pushed  into  the  enemy's  area. 

One  requisite  for  a  successful  envelopment 
then  was  information.  But  it  was  admitted 
that  information  would  not  necessarily  be  forth- 
coming at  the  very  outset,  and  an  army  situated 
as  the  Germans  were  could  not  wait.  So, 
in  the  first  instance,  the  long  line  was  directed 
upon  the  area  in  which  the  enemy  were 
supposed  to  be  moving.  In  the  deter- 
mination of  this  area  the  cavalry  naturally 
played  a  smaller  part  than  peace-time 
study  and  carefxil  agent  work.  But  its 
part  in  cutting  out,  one  after  the  other. 
Wrong  hj'po theses  as  to  the  enemy's  position 
in  that  area  was  expected  to  be  very  consider- 
able. Wlien  all  was  said  and  done,  however, 
it  was  net  believed  that  the  cavalry  could  do 
more  than  help  to  clear  up  the  situation.  The 
real  beginnings  of  the  envelopment  were  in 
the  railway  lines  of  GermanJ^ 

In  this  fact — so  German  authorities  con- 
sidered —  laj'  the  best  guarantee  of  all.  Not 
only  were  numerous  through  lines  of  railway 
transport  and  railheads  provided  with  platforms 
for  the  detrainment  of  guns  and  animals* 
essential  for  speed  in  the  operations,  but  they 

•As  every  traveller  knows,  ordinary  German  railway  stations 
have  no  platloims  in  the  British  sense. 


ensured  a  simxiltaneous  controlled  start  of  the 
whole  line  by  marking  a  limit  which  every  corps 
could  reach  within  a  given  period,  and  further 
enabled  the  whole  frontier  line  to  be  taken  as 
the  forward  edge  of  the  zone  of  concentration.* 
The  extent  of  frontier  intended  to  be  taken  into 
this  zone  was  not  easy  to  foresee.  That  portion 
of  it  adjacent  to  the  French  frontier  was  com- 
paratively narrow,  and  on  both  sides  portions 
of  it  were  closed — whether  partially  or  com- 
pletely war  alone  could  prove — by  barrier  forts. 
In  France  the  gap  of  Epinal-Tovd,  in  Germany 
the  gap  of  Dehne-Mutzig  were  the  only  really 
clear  avenues  of  hostile  approach.  Therefore, 
though  the  numbers  of  troops  on  both  sides  were 
continually  growing,  and  progress  in  armament 
too  was  enabling  a  force  to  fight  on  an  ever  wider 
and  wider  front  for  the  same  ntxmbers,  the 
opposed  fronts  of  battle  were  equally  strong 
against  direct  attack  and  equally  difficult  to 
tim  without  violation  of  Luxemburg,  Belgian, 
and  Swiss  neutrality.  Now  these  new  condi- 
tions told  rather  against  Germany  than  against 
France,  for  the  latter' s  war  doctrine  did  not 
favoiu"  extension  of  fronts  and  the  former's  did 
so.  As  civilization  knows  to  its  cost,  Germany 
thought  it  necessary  to  expand  the  front  of 
concentration  so  as  to  take  in  practically  the 
whole  of  her  frontier  line  from  Emmerich  to 
Basle.  It  is  not  credible  that  a  doctrine  of  war 
that  was  no  more  than  skin-deep,  a  peace-time 
strategical  essay,  would  have  brought  this 
about.    It  must  therefore  be  held  to  be  finally 


•They  did  not,  however,  contrfbwte  It,  but  were  rather  detri- 
mental to  secrecy,  for  railway  works  are  constructed  and  run 
openly  in  peace.  It  was  possible  for  any  foreign  staff  officer, 
therefore,  to  work  out  time  tables  for  the  concentration. 


FRENCH    FORTRESS    ARTILLERY. 
Officers  watching  effect  of  fire. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


119 


proved,  what  other  evidence  had  already 
indicated  more  and  more  strongly,  that  accord- 
ing to  German  ideas  the  envelopment  must 
start  by  converging  marches,  and  not  be  de- 
veloped from  an  initial  close  grouping. 

Whether  or  not  such  procedure  was  correct 
under  the  circumstances  was  a  question  upon 
which  strategists  were  by  no  means  agreed.  Some 
of  the  most  eminent  held  that  by  extending  the 
zone  of  concentration  along  the  Luxemburg- 
Belgian  frontier  the  Germans  sacrificed  in  speed 
what  they  gained  in  width,  in  that  the  entry 
of  the  enveloping  wing  into  France  was  delayed 
by  the  amount  of  time  required  for  its  traversing 
of  Belgium,  so  that  to  ensure  simultaneous  onset 
it  became  necessary  to  hold  back  the  central 
or  Franco -German  frontier  portion  of  the  line 
fo'  an  appreciable  number  of  days.  But  tJa^ 
German  soldiers  believed  it  to  be  the  correct 
procedure  is  evidenced  by  the  price  that  they 
were  prepared  to  pay  for  it. 

Before  discussing  the  mechanism  of  the 
envelopment,  let  us  consider  for  a  moment  this 
factor  of  simultaneity.  We  have  noted  that  it  is 
essential  to  the  working  of  the  German  type 
of  envelopment  that  the  taking  of  contact  with 
the  enemy  shoiold  be  practically  simultaneous 
at  all  points.  This  is  necessary,  because,  in 
the  first  instance,  the  front  of  deployment  is 
as  wide  as  nature  allows,  and  each  of  the  nuclei 
that  form  at  the  railheads  presents  a  separate 
weak  target  for  the  blow  of  a  better  prepared 
enemy,  and  in  the  later  stages  the  deeply- 
disposed  opponent  will  have  detachments 
called  protective  troops  pushed  out  in  all 
dangerous  directions.  We  shall  have  to  deal  at 
greater  length  with  this  combination  when  we 
come  to  discuss  the  French  doctrine  in  which 
it  played  an  important  and  even  dominant 
part.  Here  it  only  need  be  pointed  out  that 
these  protective  detachments  would  delay 
those  portions  of  the  long  deployed  line  of  the 
Germans  which  they  raet,  while  the  rest 
progressed  with  less  retardation.  If  that  line 
was  to  be  kept  intact,  therefore,  parts  of  it 
must  be  held  back  and  others  pushed  on, 
regardless  of  the  purely  local  circumstance  of 
each  part.  But  such  a  theory,  which  might 
have  been  possible  with  nonchalant  professional 
armies  of  the  eighteenth  century  kind,*  was  less 
securely  based  when  the  army  to  execute  it  was 
a  high-tension  citizen  army.  If  it  was  a  re- 
proach to  the  French  school  of  strategy  that  its 
methods  overstrained  the  instrvmient,  in  some 
respects  at  any  rate  the  German  doctrine  was 


•If  they  had  possessed  numbers  and  manoBuvring    capacity, 
which  they  did  not. 


FRENCH    ARMOURED    TRAIN    GAR. 

The  upper  picture  shows  the  Observation 

Tower  raised. 

in  no  better  case.  The  soldier  is  influenced 
chiefly,  if  not  entirely,  by  the  local  situation ; 
and  though  a  professional  would  shrug  his 
shoulders  if  told  to  attack  an  obviously  im- 
pregnable position  or  to  abandon  a  pursuit,  a 
citizen  soldier  would  not  be  so  philosophical. 
In  August,  1870,  for  instance,  Moltke  intended 
his  right  and  centre  armies  to  lie  low  for  five 
days  on  the  Saar  until  the  Crown  Prince's  left 
army  could  come  into  line  with  them  and 
commence  the  envelopment  of  the  French  right. 
But  on  the  very  first  of  these  five  days  the  units 
of  these  centre  armies  were  moving  about 
amongst  themselves,  and  on  the  third  day  a 
piecemeal  attack  by  parts  of  these  mixed -up 
commands  ended  in  the  defeat  of  a  French 
detachment  at  Spicheren  and  a  general  advance 
over  the  Saar.  Not  only  was  the  Crown  Prince's 
army  imablo  to  come  up  in  time  for  the  pro- 
jected envelopment  of  the  area  of  the  Saar, 
but  also  the  French  Army  was— save  for  the 
detachment  above  mentioned — not  in  that 
area  at  all. 


120 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


The  instance  just  quoted  shows  further  that 
timing  is  quite  as  important  an  ingredient  of 
success  as  is  direction.  For  not  only  the 
central  armies,  but  those  on  the  flanks  as 
well  mvist  be  pushed  on  or  held  back 
so  as  to  form  a  continuous  line  with  its 
neighbours,  and  the  wing  armies  have  to 
choose  the  exact  moment  for  swinging  in,  lest 
the  enemy,  instead  of  standing  spellbound 
as  the  magic  circle  formed  itself  round  him, 
should  retire  in  time  and  leave  the  enveloper 
facing  inwards  on  the  circumference  of  an 
empty  circle — than  which  no  more  ludicrous 
position  can  be  conceived*  either  in  strategy 
or  in  tactics.  And  there  were  more  dangerous, 
if  less  absurd,  possibilities  than  this.  If  the 
wing  that  was  to  envelop  went  too  far  before 
swinging,  the  enemy  could  covinter-attack 
the  dormant  centre,  and,  if  it  swung  too  soon, 
a  mistake  in  the  choice  of  enveloped  area  would 
expose  it  to  be  taken  in  reverse.  Qui  toume 
est  toume. 

The  dilemma  was,  in  short,  this.  Nothing 
but  a  fierce  simultaneous  onset  upon  every 
hostile  body  that  presented  itself  would  prevent 
an  opponent  from  manoeuvring  for  a  counter- 
stroke,  but  this  attack  all  along  the  line 
was   itself   dangerous,  if   not   fatal,    to   simul- 


•Grand  Duke  of  Mecklenburg  before  Nogent-le-Rotron,   1870. 
Japanese  at  Mukden. 


taneous  action.  But  all  these  questions  were 
mere  details  of  greater  or  less  importance 
according  to  the  circumstances  of  the  case  and 
the  skill  and  resolution  of  the  leaders.  The 
one  great  and  controlling  principle  in  this  form 
of  strategy  is  its  finality.  All  means  tending  to 
the  decisive  issue  are  deployed  at  the  outset 
in  a  formation  that  gives  either  the  maximum 
victory  or  the  maximum  disaster.  For  the 
long  deployed  line  once  launched  is  incapable 
of  mancBuvring  in  any  new  direction  or  meeting 
any  new  emergency.  Once  and  for  all  the  die 
has  been  cast.  These  being  some  of  the  pur- 
poses, advantages,  and  risks  of  envelopment, 
we  may  sketch  very  briefly  the  mechanism  of 
execution,  first  in  the  strategical  £ind  then  in  the 
tactical  sphere. 

The  first  phase  is  the  selection  of  the  front  of 
initial  concentration,  which  is  as  broad  as 
circumstances  allow,  to  ensure  of  the  overlap 
later,  and  also  because  the  broader  the  front  the 
greater  the  number  of  through  railway  lines 
available  and  the  shorter  the  time  reqviired  to 
concentrate.  This  line  of  railheads  is  so  chosen 
that  its  flanks  are  safe  by  position  from  a  swoop 
of  the  enemy's  readiest  troops,  and  if  no  natural 
obstacle  is  available  the  railheads  are  slanted 
back  en  echelon  on  the  exposed  flank  so  as  to 
increase  the  time  of  marching  and  to  place  the 
inner   and  more  forward  railheads  on  the  flank 


FRENCH    MOBILIZATION. 
Pr^wing  yp  Orders  in  a  Railway  Cart 


[Topic«f. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


121 


FRENCH    HEAVY    ARTILLERY. 


of    an    enemy    desirous    of    attacking    them.* 
The  second  phase — which  is  hardly  distinguish- 
able from  the  first — is  the  protection   of  the 
central   railheads   against   the   immediate   and 
direct   onset   of   the   enemy's   readiest   frontier 
forces  during  the  period  of  concentration.     In 
1870,  leaving  no  protective  forces  in  advance 
of   his   centre,   Moltke   was   compelled   on   the 
first  threat  of  a  French  offensive  to  put  back 
the  line  of  railheads  from  the  Saar  to  the  Rhine, 
a  step  which,  taken  in  the  very  middle  of  the 
delicate    phase    of    concentration,    produced  a 
most    dangerous    situation,  f     From    1871    on- 
wards therefore  the  Germans  so  far  accepted  the 
idea   of   protective   detachments   that   a   very 
powerful  force  in  a  high  state  of  readiness  was 
maintained  on  the  frontier  districts  at  all  times. 
The  disadvantages  attaching  to  such  a  force — 
its  liability  to  attack  before  the  main  armies  had 
■gathered,   and  the  necessity   of  mobilizing  in 
two  stages — were  accepted  with  it.     These  were 
inconveniences,    but   hostile   interference   with 
the  strategic  deployment   when   the  latter  was 
preparatory  to  a  simultaneous  advance   would 
be  a  disaster. 

For,  as  we  have  seen,  the  flanks  of  the  line 
were,  in  the  first  instance,  echeloned  back, 
while  during  the  advance  they  must  be  level 
with  the  centre,  and  as  the  moment  for  their 
swing  came  nearer  they  must  be  echeloned 
forward.  Simultaneous  action,  difficult  enough 
to  obtain  on  a  level  line,  might  seem  to  be 
more  so  when  the  flanks  had  to  move  fast'  r 
than  the  centre.  Yet  if  the  direction  of  the 
advance  had  been  well  chosen,  the  centre, 
full  in  front  of  the  enemy's  main  body,  would 
automatically  be  slowed  down  enough  for  the 


•The  protective  troops  in  front  of  the  centre  alluded  to  a  little 
later  do  not  extend  tar  enough  to  the  flanks  to  afford  direct  pro- 
tection to  the  whole  long  line  of  railheads. 

tThat  it  had  been  foreseen  and  its  details  fixed  beforehand 
made  little  or  no  difference.  It  was  nothing  less  than  the  plan  of 
operations  itseU  tbat  was  thtowa  QUt  of  gear  by  the  variant. 


wings  to  Echelon  themselves  forward.  One 
difficulty  neutralized  the  other,  provided  only 
that  the  supreme  command  had  made  his 
choice  correctly.  But,  as  we  know,  his  decision 
Was  founded  upon  a  preconceived  idea  and 
supported  by  a  certain  amount  of  cavalry 
information,  and,  therefore,  liable  to  error. 
In  this  Echeloning  out  o^'  the  flanks,  as  in 
all  other  details  in  the  act  of  envelopment, 
the  straightforward  workmg  of  the  plan 
depended  wholly  upon  correct  premises.  Sup- 
pose that  one  of  the  wings  met  with  sharp 
opposition  that  slowed  it  down  to  the  pace  of 
the  centre,  the  whole  system  would  never 
succeed  in  forming  the  forward  crescent  that 
was  the  immediate  prelude  of  envelopment. 
It  would  remain  a  line,  and  a  thin  line  at  that. 


GENERAL    BONNAL. 
The  eminent  French  strategist. 


122 


TEE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


M.    MESSIMY. 

French  Minister  for  War  at  the   outbreak  of 

hostilities. 

and  the  solid  counter-attacking  mass  woiild 
roll  it  up.  The  deployed  line  cannot  retrieve 
its  mistakes. 

Another  factor,  which  is  strictly  speaking  of 
the  moral  and  not  of  the  mechanical  order,  is 
the  necessity  of  restricting  the  initiative  of 
subordinate  commanders.  Every  student  of 
1870  knows  that  the  history  of  that  war  teems 
with  examples  of  reckless  a«ts  of  initiative, 
sometimes  fruitful,  sometimes  dangeroxis,  but 
always  bearing  the  stamp  of  official  approval, 
rphe  heavy  precision  of  the  Prussian  mind  had 


had  to  be  educated  to  display  "  initiative,"  and 
it  gave  out  its  lesson,  once  learnt  in  season 
and  out  of  season.*  By  1914  this  freedom 
had  been  almost  wholly  withdrawn.  The  form 
of  envelopment  having  been  chosen,  and  itf 
attendant  difficulties  of  timing  accepted,  the 
least  that  could  be  done  was  to  restrict  the 
subordinate  initiative  that  had  caused  most  of 
the  mistiming  of  1870.  No  army  did  more 
hearty  Up-service  to  the  god  of  initiative  than 
the  German.  "No  army  allowed  less  of  it  in 
practice.  The  commander  with  initiative 
as  understood  and  encouraged  in  Germany 
was  pimply  what  in  Great  Britain  would  be 
called  the  "  thruster,"  the  man  of  energy  who, 
somehow,  anj^how,  carried  through  the  set 
task  within  the  set  limits.  The  initiative  of  a 
Kameke  or  a  Schkopp,  the  initiative  which 
without  reference  to  the  higher  authorities 
evolved  new  plans  of  general  battle  whenever 
confronted  with  local  emergencies,  had  been 
altogether  suppressed. 

Yet  another  point  of  German  procedixre  may 
be  noted  before  we  pass  on  to  the  tactical 
outcome  of  tliis  strategy.  As  has  been  re- 
marked, the  long  deployed  line  is  incapable  of 
manceuvre,  meaning  by  manceuvre-capacity 
the  power  of  moving  in  any  direction  and  not 
merely  forward  and  back.  A  change  of  front, 
say  from  south  to  east,  would  take  for  a  line  100 
miles  long  swinging  on  one  of  its  flanks  as  a 

•It  might  be  suggested  that  the  acts  of  barbaritr  which  so  utterly 
disgraced  the  army  in  1914  can  be  attributed  in  part  at  least  to  the 
same  psychology  as  the^e  acts  of  initiative  of  1870 — a  mentality 
which  Is  not  capable  of  nuances,  but  can  only  take  in  its  lesson 
if  it  is  put  in  its  crudely  absolute  terms  and  reproduces  it  exactly 
as  learnt. 


FRENCH    FORTRESS    ARTILLERY— 22    CM.    MORTARS. 


THE    TIMES  HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


123 


A    VIEW     OF    THE    BATTLEFIELD     NEAR    SEZANNE. 


IL.N./1. 


fixed  pivot  no  less  than  ten  days  of  ordinary 
inarching  (the  outer-flank  troops  having  to 
move  along  an  arc  of  150  miles).  Certain  Ger- 
man writers,  therefore,  Bernhardi  amongst 
them,  had  proposed  to  use  the  principle  of 
echeloning  in  cases  of  change  of  front  with  the 
pivot  at  the  centre.  This  obviously  shortens 
the  time  of  wheeling  through  a  right -angle, 
the  arc  being  now  75  miles,  equivalent  to  five 
days.*  But  while  one  half  of  the  line  swung 
forward  the  other  would  have  to  swing  back, 
and  it  was  perhaps  doubtful  how  far  the  moral 
of  modern  national  armies  would  be  affected  by 
a  retrograde  movement  that  neither  was  com- 
pelled by  the  enemy  nor  had  any  obvious  ad- 
vantage. And  naturally  the  advantages  of 
the  great  arm's  length  swing  as  well  as  its  dis- 
advantages were  halved  by  this  procedure. 
Without  entering  into  any  discussion  of  this 
highly  technical  point,  we  simply  note  it  as 
one  of  the  methods  at  the  German  strategists' 
disposal.  The  type,  or  rather  the  tendency 
of  the  Germans'  tactics  was  in  complete  accord 
with  their  tendencies  in  strategy.  It  would  be 
m.ore  accurate  to  say  that  the  strategy  from 
the  detrainment  on  the  line  of  railheads  to  the 
inward  swing  of  the  flank  armies  was  simply 
the  first  chapter  of  the  same  book.  Even  in 
1870  this  was  true  to  some  extent.  But  then 
the  numbers  available  were  comparatively 
small  and  the  density  of  the  battle-grouping 
comparatively  great,  so  that  the  armies  con- 
verged more  sharply  than  was  the  case  in  the 
war  with  which  we  are  concerned.  In  1914 
the  thin  battle-front  of  the  deployed  millions 
was  almost  as  long  as  the  line  of  railheads 
itself,  and  the  lines  of  advance  of  the  various 
armies  were  almost  parallel.  More  than  ever, 
in  these  conditions,  the  strategy  and  the  tactics 

•There  were  also  certain  technical  advantages  attaching  to  this 
procedure  in  the  matter  of  preventing  the  wagon  trains  of  one  coips 
from  impeding  the  fighting  troops  of  another. 


are  simply  part  i.  and  part  ii.  respectively  of  the 
same  work.  Did  our  space  permit  it  would 
be  interesting  to  discuss  the  several  methods  by 
which  the  battle  and  the  approach  were  made 
to  dovetail  into  one  another — for  in  this 
branch  and  in  this  branch  alone*  of  the 
art  of  war  the  Germans  appeared  to  be  theoreti- 
i^ally  ahead  of  their  opponents.  But  it  must 
suffice,  as  a  prelude  to  our  brief  study  of  the 
German  battle,  to  mention  that  the  greatest 
possible  attention  had  been  paid  to  the  smooth 
and  quick  deployment  "  of  long  marching 
columns.  In  France  and  Great  Britain  the 
word  deployment  is  used  in  two  senses — 
in  its  true  meaning  for  the  forming  combatant 
lines  on  the  battlefield  and  more  loosely  for  the 
arraying  of  masses  in  a  general  line  before 
action.  The  Germans,  on  the  other  hand,  dia 
tinguished  carefully  between  Aufmarsch  (march 


♦Not  strictly  true,  for  the  Echelon  movements  of  armies,  however, 
had  also  been  practised  more  often  and  were  valued  more  highly 
by  the  Germans  than  by  others. 


ilrfii.i'il»i>l»4>i liilll Ill'  "  * 


ig«tt4-:."-.  ..^ 


PART     OF    A    BATTERY     OF     155     MM 
REMAILHO    Q.F.    GUNS. 


124 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


A   FRENCH   INFANTRYMAN    SHOWING 
MODERN     EQUIPMENT. 

{Topical. 

up  to  the  field)  and  Deployieren  (deploy- 
naent  on  the  field),  and  the  intermediate  stage, 
too,  had  a  designation  of  its  own,  Entfaltung 
(unfolding),  which  was  the  process,  by  which 
the  thirty-mile  deep  marching  columns  of  the 
army  corps  on  the  main  roads  broke  up  into 
emaller  columns  moving  on   all   available    by 


roads  and  even  across  country  preparatory  to 
tlie  deployment  proper.  The  high  training  of 
corps  and  divisional  staffs  in  the  management 
of  the  Entfaltung  made  itself  felt  in  the  early 
stages  of  the  war,  in  which  time  after  time 
we  find  the  Allies  taken  aback  by  the  rapidity 
with  which  the  enemy  developed  his  huge  masses 
from  their  columns  of  route. 

By  this  well-managed  transition  the  Grermans 
were  brought  out  of  the  domain  of  strategy  into 
that  of  tactics.  In  that  field  their  constancy 
of  strategy  was  expected  to  reap  its  reward. 
The  theory  of  the  enveloping  battle  is  that  Tinder 
modern  conditions  the  number  of  men  sviscep- 
tible  of  useful  employment  on  a  given  frontage 
is  small,  and  that  no  good  purpose  is  served  by 
piling  up  reserves  behind  the  fighting  hne, 
since  only  one  rifle  per  yard  of  front  can  be 
effective.  Granting,  though  not  admitting, 
this  proposition,  then  it  follows  that  everj' 
increment  of  force  beyond  that  required  to 
establish  and  to  maintain  a  firing  line  of  one 
rifle  to  the  yard  (with  its  immediate  aids  of 
artillery)  can  only  be  employed  towards  the 
flanks.  Only  superiority  of  fire  can  justify 
assault  and  ensure  victory,  and  superiority  of 
fire  is  gained  by  a  superior  number  of  rifles* 
in  action.  Now,  yard  for  yard,  the  maximiun 
number  of  these  rifles  is  the  same  on  both 
sides.  Superiority  therefore  can  only  be  ob- 
tained by     contriving  the  convergence  of  fire 


*This  proposition,  again,  is  not  one  that  would  be  accepted 
without  mp.ny  reservations  in  Great  Britain. 


FRENCH  OFFICER  INSTRUCTING  HIS   SOLDIERS  BEFORE  GOING  INTO   ACTION. 

[Record  Press. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


125 


from  a  wider  arc  than  that  held  by  the  defence. 
Extension  towards  the  flanks  and  incurving  of 
the  hne  thus  extended  are  therefore  the  main 
characteristics  of  the  German  battle,  and  the 
logical  extreme  to  which  they  tended  were  of 
course  complete  envelopment  of  a  smaller  de- 
fending circle  by  a  larger  attacking  circle.  Such 
a  result,  even  if  only  partially  obtained,  gave,  so 
the  Germans  held,  the  greatest  chances  of 
victory,  and  as  we  have  seen,  the  victory  of 
envelopment  is  definitive,  a  "  crowning  mercy," 
IS  Cromwell  would  have  said.*  It  was  ad- 
mitted, at  the  same  time,  that  the  issue  might  be 
definitive  defeat,  but  as,  tactically,  envelop- 
ment and  convergence  of  fiire  went  hand  in 
hand,  victory  was  much  more  likely  than  defeat. 

The  attempt  to  realize  superiority  of  fire  is 
made  not  only  by  deploying  on. the  outer  arc, 
but  by  all  available  means,  whether  on  the  front 
or  the  incurving  flanks.  Most  of  the  character- 
istics to  which  we  have  already  alluded  in  the 
province  of  strategy  appear  also  in  that  of 
tactics — methodical  advance  during  the  ent- 
faltung,  methodical  and  complete  preparation 
during  the  initial  stage,  and  then  the  fierce 
simultaneous  onset  in  maximum  force  and  at 
maximum  speed  upon  a  spellbound  adversary. 
We  have  watched  the  component  masses  of  the 
army  advancing  first  in  deep  columns  along  the 
main  roads,  then  in  shallower  columns  on  all 
available  tracks,  the  wings  first  Echeloned  back, 
then  coming  up  into  line,  and  then  drawing  out 
forward  for  the  decisive  blow.  The  columns 
are  preceded  by  very  small  advanced  guards 


FRENCH    INFANTRY    IN    ACTION. 

[Record  Press. 

which  are  purely  for  local  defensive  purposes 
and  as  soon  as  the  enemy  is  met  with  spread 
out  as  a  screen  for  the  deployment,  carefully 
avoiding  serious  encounters.  Under  cover  of 
this — the  adversary  of  course  being  presumed 
to  have  been  dazed  by  the  tremendous  sweep  and 
power  of  the  approach  marches — the  masses  of 
artillery  trot  forward  and  spread  out  in  their 
positions,  reserving  their  fire  until  the 
highest  authority  on  the  ground  speaks 
the  word.  It  is  with  these  artillery  masses 
rather  than  with  the  small  advanced  guards 
that  it  is  sought  to  forestall  the  enemy  in 
possession  of  ground,  and  it  is  under  cover  of  the 
same  organs  that  the  infantry  establishes  itself 
on  the  outskirts  of  the  battlefield. 


Here  appears  the  factor  of  timing — nothing 
is  launched  until  everything  is  ready.    Whether 


•Worcester  has  been  called  by  the  eminent  German  critic  Fritz 
Hoenig  the  "  archetype  of  Sedan." 


Corps  in    Column  of  Route. 

•c 


3  I*  i-s- ^  f«  t-^  h=-{|; 


'EntFa.lt 


ung 
,—  HZ 


-a*<-cziD' 


/-C=3-' 


O     «H 


13 
■a 


■a 

■D 

■a 


Deployment. 


•a 


126 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


ZOUAVES    WORKING    MITRAILLEUSE. 

iTopical. 

the  Germans  would  not  lose  in  this  phase  a  good 
deal  of  the  momentum  that  they  had  gained  in 
the  rapid  and  powerful  strategical  advance  was 
questionable.  But,  for  good  or  evil,  matters 
were  so  ordained,  for  the  need  of  simultaneous 
general  action  overrode  all  local  con- 
siderations. The  Germans  would  sooner  with- 
draw their  advance  guards  altogether  than 
reinforce  them. 

Intimately  connected  with  these  special 
features  of  the  German  doctrine,  and  indeed 
more  important  than  any  of  them,  is  the  absence 
of  reserves.  As  we  have  seen,  the  Germans 
held  that  over  and  above  a  certain  small  number 
of  men  to  the  yard  and  the  appropriate  gun 
power  in  support  of  them,  no  force  could  make 
its  action  felt  in  the  front-to-front  engagement. 
They  must,  therefore,  be  employed  on  the 
flanks,  and  it  is  better  to  place  them  there  in  the 
first  instance,  by  converging  marches  from  a 
previous  still  wider  front,  than  to  march  them 
out  from  behind  the  centre  after  contact  has 
been  made  there.  Hence  it  follows  that  the 
only  functions  of  a  reserve  in  the  centre  were 
that  of  a  reservoir  to  keep  the  firing  line  up  to 
strength  and  that  of  acting  as  small  change  to 
deal  with  local  emergencies  as  they  occurred.* 
The  whole  of  the  artillery  likewise  are  given  over 
to  the  divisional  commanders,  the  corps  com- 
mander retaining  nothing  but  some  technical 
troops  in  his  own  hands.  This  theory  wa,s 
acted  upon  in  all  its  risky  simplicity  until  about 
1912,    when   the   extreme  danger  of  deploying 

•In  one  Zoi.?erma»(5»er  after  another  such  tiny  reserves  as  1/10 
and  1/12  ot  the  total  are  found. 


all  available  means  in  front  of  a  mere  false 
position  or  advanced  guard  of  the  enemy  was 
so  far  recognized  that  reserves  of  fire — not 
be  it  observed,  of  men — were  constituted  in  the 
shape  of  machine-gun  batteries  (companies) 
and  heavy  artillery  units  at  the  disposal  of  the 
higher  commanders.  But  this  was  the  only 
precaution  taken  ;  in  general  the  old  doctrine 
remained  unchanged.  While  the  unit  might 
be,  and  was.  disposed  in  successive  lines,  no 
two  self-contained  units  with  different  functions 
were  disposed  one  behind  the  other.*  Every 
man  behind  a  given  part  of  the  front  was 
simply  a  second  or  third  or  fourth  instalment 
of  the  effort  already  begun  on  that  part  of  it. 
Behind  the  front,  then,  was  no  manosuvring 
body  whatever. 

Fast,  smooth  deployment,  precaution  against 
premature  or  partial  engagement,  and  absence 
of  reserves,  then,  are  the  elements  of  the  German 
battle.  Suppose  now  that  it  proceeds  as 
arranged,  undisturbed  by  counter-attack.  The 
fully-arrayed  Germans  need  not  hurry.  The 
enemy  is  bound  to  accept  the  fight — ^he  cannot, 
so  they  said,  break  away  and  manoeuvre,  once 
he  has  been  subjected  to  the  sudden  intense 
fire  simultaneously  opened  by  all  the  concealed 
batteries  of  the  attack.  The  firing  line  of  the 
frontal  attack  can  form  itself  methodically, 
at  a  range  well  beyond  that  at  which  decisive 
losses  can  be  inflicted  on  it,  and  wait  for  the 


•Save  in  so  far  as  the  process  of  developing  the  frontage  might 
momentarily  place  a  marching  wing  unit  in  rear  of  a  fighting  frontal 
unit. 


FRENCH    MOUNTAIN    ARTILLERY. 

\Jopicalt 


THE    TIMES    Bt STORY    OP    THE    WA^. 


m 


A  FRENCH   GUN   TRAVELLING   OVER  ROUGH  GROUND. 


{Topical. 


enveloping  or  decisive  attack  to  come  into 
line  with  it.  In  this  waiting  phase,  which  may 
be — and  in  the  event  was — prolonged  over  days, 
a  great  strain  is  put  upon  the  discipline  and 
endurance  of  the  rank  and  file,  subjected  night 
and  day  at  irregular  intervals  to  gusts  of  shell 
fire  and  all  the  time  to  the  fear  of  the  next  gust. 
But  supposing  that  this  test — for  which 
the  iron  "  Old  Prussian  "  discipline 
has  prepared  them — is  passed  successfully, 
then  the  whole  line,  centre  and  wings  together, 
deployed  at  1,000  yards  or  so  from  the  enemy 
in  its  "  principal  fire  position "  opens  the 
decisive  attack,  fighting  its  way  in  by  sheer 
battering  voliime  of  fire  from  gun  and  rifle. 
As  the  fresh  wing  will  necessarily  progress  faster 
than  the  tired  centre  the  line  automatically 
becomes  a  crescent,  and  the  envelopment 
and  convergence  of  fire,  already  half  effected 
thereby,  will  become  more  and  more  pronounced 
until  it  is  complete  and  triumphant.     The  final 


assatdt  is  merely  the  act  of  "  cashing  the  cheque 
drawn  by  fire -power." 

This  is  the  full  envelopment  by  both  flanks 
in  which  there  is  no  pursuit,  as  there  is  no  enemy 
free  to  run  away.  But  it  is  possible  and  likely 
that  only  one  flank  of  the  adversary  wUl  be 
successfully  enveloped.  But  the  course  of 
events  is  practically  the  same.  A  pvirsuit  will 
be  necessary,  and  in  its  reckless  vigour  every 
man  and  horse  must  be  used  up  in  the  pursuit, 
but  once  the  enemy  begins  to  break  up,  under 
the  stress  of  partial  envelopment  and  consequent 
pursuit,  the  decisive  and  complete  envelopment 
is  only  a  matter  of  days.  Such,  then,  were  the 
German  conceptions  of  modern  war  and  the 
tendencies  to  be  foreseen  in  putting  them  into 
practice — the  long  line  held  completely  under 
control  up  to  the  proper  moment  and  then 
launched  with  all  possible  speed  and  violence, 
without  partial  engagements,  feints,  or  adroit 
individual  strokes  of  any  kind. 


128 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


H.R.H.    THE    PRINCE    OF    WALES. 


Campbell  Grayt 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


THE  BRITISH  ARMY. 


ilEVIEW      OF      THE      HISTORY    OF    THE    ArMY — EVOLUTION     WITHOUT     REVOLUTION — CaRDWELL's 

Linked  Battalions — The  Professional  Army  and  the  Citizen  Army — The  Napoleonic 
War — The  Nineteenth  Century — Progress  of  the  Volunteer  Movement — The  Franco- 
German  War — Consequent  Changes  in  the  Regular  Army — The  South  African  War — 
The  Haldane  Reforms  —  Drafts  and  Establishments  Between  1904-1913  —  Mobilization 
— Reserves  —  Territorial  Force  —  Officers  and  Reserve  of  Officers  —  War  Office 
Organization — Fighting  Organization  of  the  Expeditionary  Force — The  Infantry  Divi- 
sion—  Auxiliary  Services — Line  of  Communication — Supply — ^Motor  Transport — ^Medical 
Service — The  Cavalry  Division — "  An  Enemy  Not  to  be  Despised." 


THE  British  Army  was  the  result  of 
centuries  of  slow  development,  at 
no  period  of  which  there  had 
occurred  any  event  or  reform  so 
comprehensive  as  to  deserve  the  name  of 
revolution.  Organized  originally  for  King's 
garrisons  overseas  and  King's  retainers  at 
home  and  long  styled  by  constitutional 
usage  "  guards  and  garrisons,"  the  Regiilar 
Army  had  grown  up  regiment  by  regiment 
precisely  as  needs  presented  themselves,  and  had 
been  reduced  regiment  by  regiment  whenever 
a  need  passed  away  or  the  political  and  social 
circumstances  called  or  seemed  to  call  for  econo- 
mies. 

It  began  with  the  small  remnant  t  isting  of 
two  regiments  only,  which  the  Restoration 
Government  of  1660  took  over  from  the  Army 
of  Cromwell.  To  this  were  added  reginxents  of 
men  who  had  shared  exile  with  the  King — 
in  the  nature  of  things  a  very  small  body. 
The  King  himself  was  a  "  King  upon  condi- 
tions," and  one  condition  exacted  by  public 
opinion  was  that  there  should  be  no  repet'tion  of 
the  military  occupation  of  England  by  Cromwell's 
major-generals.  It  was  the  acquisition  of 
Tangier,  which  came  as  Catherine  of  Braganza's 
dowry,  that  first  called  for  an  increase  which 
Parliament  would  admit.  Similar  small  increases 
folic  wed,  each  with  its  own  occasion  to  sanction 
it,  and  were  considered  so  formidable  to  liberty 


as  to  interest  Parliament  in  cancelling  them  after 
such  occasions  had  passed.  In  larger  emergencies 
Great  Britain  raised  emergency  armies  in  much 
the  same  way  as  other  countries  had  done  up 
to  the  time  of  the  introduction  of  the  "  standing 
army  "  by  Louis  XIV.  and  Louvois.  These 
emergency  armies  were  largely  foreign  troops, 
taken  into  pay  temporarily,  a  procediire  that 
to  the  18th-century  conceptions  of  statehood 
and  nationality  was  not  in  the  least  shocking^ 
but  rather  wise.  But  some  were  British, 
and  although  at  the  peace  superfluous 
British  regiments  were  disbanded  at  the 
same  time  as  the  foreign  regiments  were  given 
back  to  their  masters,  yet  at  the  end  of  each 
war  a  few  regiments  managed  to  weather  the 
storm  of  retrenchment,  just  as  a  century  before 
temporary  regiments  in  the  French  Army 
were  now  and  then  "  given  the  white  flag," 
which  placed  them  on  the  permanent  establish- 
ment. This  practice  was,  as  regards  the  French, 
already  150  years  old  when  Charles  II.  came  to 
the  throne  in  England,  and  the  French  had 
obtained  a  long  start  in  the  formation  of  regular 
and  permanent  armies.  In  so  far  as  the  King 
was  able  by  a  process  of  "  here  a  little  there  a 
little "  to  expand  the  force  at  his  personal 
disposal  at  home,  h.3  followed  the  French  fashion, 
which  in  due  course  was  succeeded  by  the  Prus- 
sian fashion,  placed  beyond  cavil  and  criticism 
by  Frederick  the  Great, 


129 


130 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


These  French  and  Prussian  influences,  as  well 
as  the  pecviliar  conditions  which  made  the 
British  Army  a  group  of  "  guards  and  garrisons," 
still  possessed  not  a  little  significance  even  in 
1914,  when  the  circumitances  of  Great  Britain 
hati  undergone  great  transformations.  They 
were  responsible,  in  fact,  for  three  of  the  most 
marked  characteristics  of  the  Regular  Army — 
its  oversea  service,  its  close  regimental  system, 
and  its  strictly  professional  type. 

Up  to  the  time  of  the  Indian  Mutiny  these 
characteristics  were  far  more  marked.  But  when 
oversea  garrisons  on  a  really  large  scale  had 
to  be  foimd,  it  became  gradually  clear  that  one 
characteristic  interfered  with  the  other.  The 
Prussian  and  French  armies,  which  gave  the 
British  their  regimental  system,  had  no  such 
drain  upon  them  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  if 
fresh  men  had  constantly  to  be  found  for  the 
Colonies  and  India,  the  essence  of  the 
regimental  system — the  long-service  private 
soldier — ^was  forfeited  so  far  as  troops  at  home 
were  concerned.  In  fact,  the  regimental 
system  in  its  ordinary  working  broke  down 
utterly  when  the  smallest  additional  transfer 
of  force  from  home  to  abroad  or  vice  versa 
was  required.  For  a  century  before  that  date 
there  was  no  better  means  of  finding  the 
annual  Indian  draft  of  men  from  home,  or  of 
reinforcing  the  home  forces  for  war,  than  the 
clvunsy  expedient  of  inducing  men  by  a  bounty 
to  transfer  from  one  regiment  to  another. 

We  have  said  that  the  Army  had  evolved 
gradually  without  any  single  event  or  reform 
that  could  be  called  a  revolution.  If  any 
reform  could  be  considered  as  a  contradiction 
to  that  statement,  it  wovild  be  the  reform 
which  Mr.  Cardwell  introduced  of  linking  the 
old  single-battalion  regiments  by  pairs  for 
purposes  of  drafting  and  routine  of  reliefs. 
The  working  of  this  system,  which  was  still, 
in  1914,  the  basic  system  of  the  Army,  will 
be  examined  in  due  coiirse.  It  has  been 
misunderstood,  in  the  Army  and  out  of  it, 
and  it  is  all  the  more  important,  therefore,  that 
the  reader  should  have  a  clear  view  of  the 
conditions  that  it  had  to  meet.  For  the  pre- 
sent it  will  suffice  to  note  that  it  only  achieved 
its  ends  by  boldly  affronting  the  old  close 
regimental  spirit.  Battalions  with  traditions 
of  their  own  were  amalgamated  into  two- 
battalion  regiments  with  no  traditions  at  all. 
But  the  regimental  system  survived,  and 
enough  of  it  still  remained  in  the  first  years 
of  the  20th  century  to  complicate  the  drafting 
question,  and  also  that  of  promotion,  to  a 
degree  that  Continental  armies,  with  their 
uniform    organizations    and    uniform    service, 


could  never  realize.  The  drafting  question, 
the  reader  will  find,  absolutely  dominated 
our  Army  problem.  The  promotion  problem 
was  simpler,  yet  its  solution  was 
certainly  not  in  sight  in  1914.  Whereas  in 
Continental  armies  an  officer,  above  all  an  excep- 
tionally good  officer,  practically  never  spent 
his  career  in  one  regiment,  in  Great  Britain 
transfers  were  few,  and  usually  limited  to 
the  simple  case  of  man-for-man  exchanges — 
which  was  quite  in  accord  with  the  general  com- 
petitive outlook  between  regiments.  In  con- 
sequence the  rate  of  promotion  was  very  imequal 
in  the  various  regiments,  notably  after  the  South 
African  War  of  1899-1902,  in  which  many  men 
of  equal  ages  and  in  the  same  regiment  were 
almost  srmviltaneoiisly  promoted.  In  the  case 
of  the  rank  and  file  transfer  without  consent 
was  a  form  of  punishment. 

That  the  regiment,  thus  conceived  as  the 
soldier's  one  home,  possessed  the  fullest 
meas\ire  of  esprit  de  corps  goes  without  saying. 
With  all  that  that  virtue  implies  the  fine  regi- 
ments of  the  Expeditionary  Force  can  without 
hesitation  be  credited.  Yet  it  is  important 
to  note  that  there  were  certain  directions  in 
which  the  strength  of  that  esprit  de  corps 
affected  tmfavourably  the  administration 
and  war-readiness  of  the  Army  at  large. 
Of  the  strictly  professional  spirit  of  the  Regular 
Army  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  adduce  examples' 
Although  the  Militia  and  Volunteer  battalions 
were  "  affiliated  "  to  the  Regular  regiment  of 
their  coiinty,  in  practice  the  tie  was  only 
nominal,*  and  there  were  cases  in  wjiich  no 
Regular  battalion  had  visited  its  county  for 
a  centiiry  and  more.  "Voluntary  enlistment 
for  service  in  any  part  of  the  world  and  for 
any  cause  in  which  the  Government  wished 
to  use  it  meant  that  the  Army  was  the  recruit's 
career  and  business.  It  was  not  a  national  duty 
imposed  upon  the  citizen  as  such,  but  in  its 
essence,   contract   service. 

Now,  such  an  Army  is  a  precious  possession, 
and  Great  Britain  was  fortimate  in  that  she 
was  the  only  European  Power  which  had  force 
in  hand  which  could  be  used  for  the  lesser 
emergencies.  It  has  been  aptly  remarked  that 
the  continental  military  machinery  mil  only 
work  at  full  power.  Taking  this  phrase  in 
the  sense  in  which  it  was  meant,  the  military 
advantage  of  Great  Britain  was  the  capacity 
to  work  effectively,  if  not  economically,  at  all 
powers.  A  grand  battle  on  the  Continent,  the 
maintenance  of  internal  order  at  home,  war  upon 
a  kinglet  in  a  tropical  forest,  and    punishment 


•  sjive in 80 tor w the MlUti»w?»v»eai»8»" feebler"  lor tbeAroiS^ 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


131 


FIELD    MARSHAL    EARL    ROBERTS. 


iW.  Sx  D.  Downey. 


of  a  high  mountain  tribe — all  these  tasks 
were  understood  to  be  within  the  capacity 
of  the  infantry  battalion  that  found  itself 
"  next  on  the  list  for  duty  "  at  any  given 
moment. 

Services  so  different  as  these  imply  that  it 
is  service  for  service's  sake,  and  not  service  on 
behalf  of  personal  beliefs  and  passions,  that 
is  the  main-spring  of  a  professional  army- 
The  British  professional  army  went  into  action 
against  savages  or  against  Boers  with  as  much 
bravery  as  against  Napoleon  or  the  Kaiser,  and 
we  as  a  nation  have  the  best  reasons  for  real- 
izing the  truth  of  the  remark  of  M.  Psicharri's 
French  officer  who,  in  contrasting  the  motives 


of  the  "  colonial "  or  adventurer  army  with 
those  of  the  "  Metropolitan "  or  national 
army,  said  that  it  was  "  a  vulgar  error 
to  .attribute  more  patriotism  to  the  former 
than  to  the  latter";  that  it  was  "a  sub- 
limated conception  of  fighting  in  itself  as  an 
ideal  "  irrespective  of  victory  and  defeat  which 
inspired  the  colonial  army*. 

But  if  we  recognize  that  it  is  not  primarily 
patriotism  but  high  adventure  that  drives 
the  professional  soldier  to  affront  the  manifold 
chances  of  his  service,  we  must  accept  it  as 
a  necessary  consequence  that  when  the  greatest 
and  gravest  emergencies — ^the  emergencies  that 
*  The  original  is  here  oondensed  and  paraphrased  sUgbtljr, 


132 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


BRIGADIER- GENERAL  H.  H.  WILSON. 

[H.  Walter  Barnett. 

enlist  the  ordinary  citizen — arise,  fundamental 
difference  of  character  between  the  Regular 
forces  and  the  citizen  forces  will  make  itself 
felt,  however  patriotic  the  soldier  may  be, 
and  however  anxious  the  citizen  in  arms  may 
be  for  pay,  separation  allowances,  &c. — 
however  completely,  in  short,  their  formal 
outward  regulations  and  terms  of  service  may 
be  assimilated  and  unified.  In  effect, 
a  citizen  army  is  definitely  marked  off 
from  a  professional  army,  even  though, 
as  in  the  case  of  modern  Eiiropean 
annies,  it  is  trained  in  barracks  for  consecutive 
years,  and  even  though,  as  in  the  American 
Civil  War,  it  goes  through  three  years  on  hard 
warfare,  a  citizen  army  it  remains.  The 
question  of  voluntary  or  compulsory  servi  e, 
which  agitated  Great  Britain  for  some  years 
before  the  Great  War,  beaxs  only  indirectly 
upon  this  larger  question.  A  nominal  com- 
pulsion if  combined  with  substitutions,  but 
only  so,  will  produce  the  professional  type, 
the  armee  de  metier  of  the  Second  Empire, 
for  example  ;  for  the  substitute  is  simply  a 
volunteer  with  a  bounty,  and  the  "  principal  " 
who  pays  him  to  serve  in  his  stead  is  a  citizen 
whose  ideal  may  be  patriotism,  but  is  certainly 
not  war  and  adventure.  And  the  citizen  army 
is  even   more  an  army  animated   by  what  is 


called  its  voluntary  spirit,  since  it  is  essentially 
an  army  fighting  ad  hoc  for  a  great  and  per- 
sonally inspiring  cause,  and  short  of  that 
cannot  be  used  at  all.  So  that  when  com- 
pulsion is  applied  to  such  a  force  in  peace  it 
mvist,  to  succeed,  have  the  certainty  that 
the  voluntary  spirit  will  be  wholly  operative 
in  war. 

If,  then,  a  nation  is  to  have  a  professional 
army  of  the  British  type,  it  should  also  possess 
for  those  graver  emergencies  a  separate  army 
based  upon  the  citizen  serving  not  as  an  agent 
of  the  community,  still  less  as  an  agent  of  the 
Cabinet,  but  strictly  as  a  member  of  the  com- 
munity. Continental  armies,  organized  for  the 
great  emergency  and  for  that  alone,  can  regard 
their  different  categories  of  armed  forces  as 
one  in  kind  though  various  in  degree  of  fitness.* 
But  the  British  was  necessarily  a  "two- 
line  army  " — an  army  consisting  of  two  differ- 
ent  parts,    each    self-contained. 

Now  the  professional  army  is  always  for  its 
numbers  the  most  costly  form,  whether  it  be 
a  purely  voluntary  one,  showing  the  whole 
of  its  expenses  on  the  State's  budget,  or  a  con- 
script substitute  one  in  which  part  of  the 
burden  of  cost  is  laid  directly  upon  the  indi- 
viduals who  pay  substitutes  to  serve  for  them. 
In  the  given  two-line  organization  therefore 
it  is  to  be  expected  that  the  expenditure  for 
the  imiforms,  arms,  training  facilities,  per- 
manent cadres,  &c.,  of  this  second  line  will  be 
kept  as  low  as  possible.  The  more  professional 
the  first  line  then  the  less  completely  trained 
the  second  line  can  be.  But  both  must  be 
employed,  and  must  also  expand  on  the  out- 
break of  a  war  of  great  and  deep  significance. 
The  only  precedent  in  modem  English  history 
for  such  a  war  was  the  Napoleonic,  and  it  is 
interesting  to  see  how  the  problem  of  expansion 
was  dealt  with  then. 

The  conditions  differed  from  the  modem  in  this 
much,  that  in  1793-1815  there  was  no  balance 
maintained  between  the  Regular  Army  at  home 
and  that  abroad — it  was,  of  course,  in  the  days 
of  the  "  volunteering  "  system  above  mentioned 
— nor  was  there  any  Army  Reserve,  since  in  the 
existing  small  Army  service  was  practically 
for  life.  But  thanks  to  the  Militia  organiza- 
tion it  was  possible,  in  a  series  of  wars  that 
extended  over  more  than  half  a  generation, 
to  develop  the  Regular  Army  at  home  into  an 
expeditionary  force,  each  battalion  of  which, 
on  going  abroad,  left  behind  it  a  draft -producing 


•Although  even  here  the  neoesslty  for  greater  technical  efficiency 
for  war — for  Instance,  the  preparedness  in  certain  frontier  troops — 
had  gone  far  enough  to  suggest  to  advanced  students  the  possibility 
of  a  return  to  the  old  arm%6e  de  miiier. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


133 


battalion  of  the  Regular  Militia.  Tliis  Militia 
was  raised  nominally  by  compulsion,  but  in 
practice  by  substitution.  Insiirance  societies 
which  were  formed  to  protect  their  members 
against  the  luck  of  the  ballot  were  able  to  pay 
handsome  bounties  to  substitutes,  and  it  was 
far  more  profitable  for  a  man  who  intended  to 
3nlist  to  do  so  in  several  stages,  at  each  of 
which  he  obtained  money  in  some  form,  rather 
than  to  go  direct  into  the  line  for  the  single 
bounty.  Behind  this  Regular  Militia,  which 
closely  corresponded  with  the  later  Special 
Reserve,  there  was  the  Local  Militia  of  1808, 
equivalent  to  the  modem  Territorial  Force, 
in  which  personal  service  was  compulsory 
and  substitution  forbidden.  This  was  purely 
a  home -service  force,  formed  out  of  the  Volun- 
teers previously  existing,  and  there  is  no  evi- 
dence that  it  found  any  reinforcements  for  the 
Regular  Army,  though  a  certain  number  of  its 
men  volunteered  for  the  Regular  Militia. 

After  the  peace  the  Militia  of  both  kinds  was 
disbanded   and   ceased   to   exist,    though  Yeo- 
manry belonging  to  it  were  from  time  to  time 
called  out  in  aid  of  the  civil  power  in  the  troubled 
years  of   1820-1850.     All  foreign  and  Colonial 
wars  and  emergencies  from  1815  to  1859  were 
strictly  of   the   kind   to   which   a    professional 
army,and  only  a  professional  army,  was  adapted, 
and  although  the  Mihtia  was  re-created,  and 
embodied  in  the   Crimean  War,  it  was  volun- 
tarily enlisted  from  the  same  classes  as  those 
which    recruited    the    hne    direct.     It    became 
an  ante -chamber  of  the  Regular  service,  and  as 
such  gradually  ceased  both  to  be  recruited  from 
citizens  or  to  represent  in  any  way  the  idea  of  ser- 
vice as  a  duty  to  society.    Into  its  place  stepped 
the  Volunteers,  who  had  primarily  been  formed, 
or  had  rather  formed  themselves,  to  meet  the 
most  serious  danger  that  had  threatened  Britain 
for  centuries — ^the   first   Napoleon  at  the  head 
of  the  best  professional  army  in  the  world  and 
a    navy  nimierically  equal,    or   even  superior, 
to    the    British  Fleet.     But,    unlike    previous 
emergency  forces,  this  did  not  vanish  when  the 
emergency  passed.     On  the  contrary,  it   grew 
into   a  permanent  force,   with  its  own  settled 
habits  and  traditions  and  a  strong  tie  of  mem- 
bership to  assist  or  replace  the  purely  military 
cohesion  that  its  intermittent  trainings  could  not 
be  expected  to  give. 

While  this  process  of  solidifying  the  tem- 
porary Volunteers  was  going  on,  the  Regular 
Army  was  itself  undergoing  great  changes.  The 
Franco-German  War  of  1870-1871  had  revealed 
the  prowess  of  the  short-service  national  army ; 
its  great  aptitude  for  the  changed  technical  con- 
ditions of  warfare,  its  extraordinary  nximerical 


strength,  and  its  intensive  traiiung.  None 
of  these  things  made  it  a  type  of  army  that 
could  serve  the  purposes  of  a  Colonial 
Empire,  but  its  numbers  and  flexibility  at  any 
rate  were  factors  in  its  favour  that  had  to  be 
taken  into  account  and  answered  by  hke  factors 
in  any  professional  army  that  might  be  called 
upon  to  face  it.  The  only  way  of  increasing  the 
numbers  of  that  professional  army  was  to  divide 
the  period  of  the  soldier's  service  into  colour 
service  and  reserve  service.  To  those  unfamihar 
with  the  working  of  the  Army  system  it  may 
seem  to  be  a  mere  truism  to  say  that  the  war 
strength  of  the  Army  depends  on  the  annual 
intake  of  recruits ;  yet  it  is  a  fact  that  critics  of 
the  system  frequently  sought  to  increase  that 
strength  by  other  means,  such  as  changing  the 
periods  of  service,  re-enhsting  reservists,  &c. 
It  is  therefore  important  to  make  it  clear  that 
the  real  gain  from  short  service  is  the  great  in- 
crease in  the  number  of  vacancies  to  be  filled 
annually,  and  therefore  a  great  increase  in  the 
intake  of  recruits,  establishments  and  cost 
remaining  unaltered.* 

The  short  service  principle  was  not,  of  course, 
appUcable  in  its  entirety.  To  begin  with, 
service  in  the  professional  overseas  Army  could 
not  be  made  incumbent  upon  the  citizen  as 
such.  Further,  when  a  man  enlisted  for  Army 
service  he  did  so  with  the  intention  of  rendering 
service  for  a  reasonable  number  of  years,  and 
not  with  that  of  receiving  training  as  quickly  as 
possible  in  view  of  a  future  emergency ;  and, 
lastly,  the  cost  of  changing  the  whole  o£  the 
rank-and-file  personnel  abroad  every  three  years 
or  so  was  prohibitive.  A  compromise  therefore 
was  adopted.  The  period  of  liability  and  of 
pay  for  that  Uability  was  fixed  at  12  years,  of 
which  six  or  seven  were  spent  with  the  colours 
and  six  or  five  in  the  reserve.-j- 

At  the  same  time  the  linking  of  the  single 
battaUons  was  carried  out,  and  to  each  regiment 
thus  formed  was  affiliated  one  or  more  Militia 
battaUons,  which  were  closely  associated  with 
the  depots  of  the  Regular  battalions,  and  so 
occupied  a  middle  position  between  the  old  self- 
contained  citizen  force  and  the  pure  draft -pro- 
ducing agency,  the  function  of  the  latter  tending 
constantly  to  develop  in  importance  at  the 
expense  of  the  former. 

This  system — professional  Regulars,  half  at 
home  and  half  abroad  ;  Militia,  half  drafts 
for  Regulars,  half  agricultural  volunteers ; 
Volunteers,  townsmen  thoroughly  organized  in 

*  Thus  on  an  establishment  of  lOC.OOO  men  always  present  v  ith 
the  colours  25,000  recruits  a  year  could  be  taken  for  four  years' 
service,  50,000  for  two  years',  and  200,000  tor  sis  months'. 

t  The  periods  have  varied  slightly,  and  in  one  c.\se,  to  be  referred 
to  presently,  a  mu«h  shortt,r  term  of  colour  service  was  introduced. 
The  oeriods  vary  also  according  to  the  arm  of  the  service. 


134 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GENERAL  SIR  HORACE  SMITH-DORRIEN 

[Newman 

battalions  and  looseiy  grouped  in  brigades,  and 
a  Regular  Army  Reserve — ^was  the  system  in 
force  when  the  next  great  occasion  for  expansion 
came  in  the  South  African  War  of  1899-1902. 
The  expansion  required  proved  to  be  too  much 
for  the  system,  especially  in  respect  of  mounted 
men.  Battalions  of  Mihtia  and  companies  of 
Volunteers  who  offered  to  serve  abroad  were 
sent  out  to  reinforce  the  infantry  and  to  set  free 
a  large  number  of  infantrymen  who  had  been 
trained  in  mounted  infantry  work.  Moreover, 
a  very  large  part  of  the  Yeomanry — ^the  light 
cavalry  pf  the  Volunteers* — ^was  sent  out,  and 
fresh  regiments  raised  ad  hoc  constantly  followed 
them.  Other  contingents  of  mounted  troops 
were  raised  in  the  Dominions  and  Colonie.% 
South  Africa  of  course  included. 

These  various  forms  of  "  expansion,"  with 
their  unavoidable  overlapping  and  the  technical 
difficulties,  both  of  handling  and  of  administra- 
tion, owing  to  the  dissimilarities  of  organi- 
zation, terms  of  service,  pay,  and  train- 
ing, led,  after  the  war,  to  a  re -examination 
of  the  whole  military  system.  After  various 
imsatisfactory  experiments  had  been  made, 
a  fresh  system  was  matvired  and  brought  into 
operation  by  Mr.  Secretary  Haldane  in  1907- 
1910 

Under  this  system,  the  Regular  forces  at 
home  were  re-grouped  and  permanently  or- 
ganized as  an  expeditionary  force  of  six  divi. 
sions  and  a  cavaJiy  division  ;    the  Militia  in 

*.IhOv3;ili  officially  a  dUtinct  force. 


its  old  form  was  abolished  and  repleiced  by  the 
Special  Reserve,  a  force  destined  on  mobiliza- 
tion to  form  a  reserve  battalion  upon  which 
the  Regular  Army  fighting  oversea  could  draw 
steadily  for  reinforcements  ;  and  the  Yeomanry 
and  Volunteers  were  re-formed  as  the  Territorial 
Force  of  all  arms  and  branches,  with  a  complete 
divisional  organization  analogous  to  that  of  the 
Regular  Army.  This  was  the  Army  system 
in  force  at  the  outbreak  of  the  great  war,  and  it 
is  now  our  duty  to  describe  it  in  sonxe  detail. 

For  the  infantry  of  the  line,  half  of  which  w£is 
at  home  and  half  abroad,  the  period  of  service 
was  seven  years  with  the  Colours  and  five  in 
the  Reserve.  This  division  of  the  twelve  years' 
liability  had  been  found  by  experience  to  give 
the  best  mean  between  the  length  of  service 
necessary  to  allow  the  drafts  and  reUefs  to  work 
well  and  the  shortness  of  service  necessary  for 
the  production  of  a  large  Reserve.  After  the 
South  African  War,  which  had  been  carried 
through,  with  a  Uttle  assistance  from  India, 
chiefly  by  the  home  Army  and  the  Reserve, 
the  value  of  the  latter  had  become  so  con- 
spicuous that  the  drafting  problem  was  allowed 
to  fall  into  the  background.  Three  years' 
Colour  and  nine  Reserve  service  was  intro- 
duced in  1902  for  the  express  purpose  of  build- 
ing up  a  great  Reserve.  But  the  conditions  of 
a  man's  eUgibiUty  for  service  in  India — (a)  age 
20  ;  (6)  service  at  least  one  year ;  (c)  not  less 
than  four  years  to  run  before  expiry  of  Colour 


MAJOR-GENERAL    ALLENBY. 

iGaU  &  PaU^ 


TflE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


135 


FIELD    MARSHAL    GENERAL    SIR    JOHN    FRENCH. 


iR,  Haines 


service  —  obviously  made  it  impossible  for  any 
soldier  enlisted  on  these  terms  to  be  sent  to 
India  at  all.  It  was  hoped  that  between  two- 
thirds  and  three-quarters  of  the  men  would 
voluntarily  "  extend  their  service,"  and  had 
that  hope  been  realized  no  difficulty  of  course 
wo\ild  have  arisen.  But  it  was  not  realized, 
and  the  working  of  the  drafts  broke  down  so 
badly  that  nine  years'  Colour  and  three  Reserve 
had  to  be  adopted  in  order  to  redress  the 
balance.  Finally,  the  former  seven-five  term 
was  reintroduced. 

But  it  was  not  only  the  years  immediately 
concerned  that  were  affected  by  these  changes 
of  terms.  Until  the  last  men  enlisted  on  the 
three-nine  year  terms  of  1902  finally  passed  out 
of  the  Reserve  in  1914,  the  routine  smoothness 
with  which  the  recruiting  branch  had  been 
working  in  the  nineties  could  not  be  restored, 
and  just  before  the  Declaration  of  War  the 
recruiting  system  was  being  taxed  to  the  utmost 
to  make  good  the  great  efflux  of  both  the  nine- 


year  men   of    1904-5  and  the  seven-year  men 
of  1906-7. 

Inseparable  from  the  question  of  drafts  was 
that  of  establishments.  The  Indian  battalion 
was  on  a  war  footing,  1,000  in  round  numbers, 
permanently,  the  home  battalion-  on  an 
establishment  of  about  750.  Now  when  a 
battalion  went  abroad  to  relieve  its  sister 
battalion  it  had  at  the  same  time  to  increase 
its  establishment,  and  as  the  battalion  due  to 
come  home  included,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
very  many  soldiers  in  their  last  year  of  service, 
i.e.,  due  for  discharge,  it  coxild  leave  behind  but 
few  for  the  newcomers  to  take  over.  The 
battalion  going  out,  therefore,  would  have  to 
provide  most  of  its  own  extra  men.  Further 
— and  this  was  always  the  crux  of  the  problem — 
it  could  not  take  with  it  men  less  than  20  years 
of  age,  nor  recruits.  If,  therefore,  it  was  to  stand 
on  its  new  footing  in  trained  men  over  19,  it  must 
have  been  over-filled  with  recruits  two  years 
beforehand,  and — as   the   home   establishment 


13C 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


then,  governed  it — serving  soldiers  must  have 
been  dismissed  prematurely  to  the  Reserve 
to  make  vacancies  for  these  recruits.  Under 
these  rigid  conditions  it  was  possible,  and  even 
frequent,  for  a  battalion  at  home  to  be  below 
establishment  and  yet  closed  to  recruiting, 
and,  worse  still,  these  premature  discharges  to 
the  Reserve  might  have  to  take  place  at  a 
moment  unfavourable  for  recruiting — as  was 
the  case  in  1912-1913,  when  in  order  to  make 
room  a  very  large  number  of  men  who  would 
be  trained  and  available  for  drafts  in  1914-15 
serving  soldiers  were  prematvirely  sent  to  the 
Reserve  by  the  thousand,  though  recruiting 
was  far  from  brisk  at  the  time.  Hence  there 
occurred  a  shortage  in  the  Regular  Army, 
which  alarmed' the  nation  not  a  little,  but  was, 
in  fact,  largely  the  result  of  the  violent  dis- 
turbance of  the  seven-five  year  term  in  1902 
and  of  the  limiting  conditions  of  establishment 
and  qualification  for  Indian  service. 

Undsr  these  conditions  the  estabUshment  of 
a  home  battalion  was  practically  determined 
by  the  numbers  of  the  annual  draft  for  India. 
In  the  days  of  "  volvmteering,"  as  we  liave 
seen,  there  was  no  large  force  of  units  at  home, 
and  the  tmits  abroad  were  fed  from  dep6ts. 
But  after  the  battaUons  were  linked,  those  at 
home  found  the  draft  for  their  "  links,"  and 
as  they  were  the  only  available  expeditionary 
force     it   was   impossible   to   regard   them   as 


r 

^ 
I 

|H 

B 

^^^^^^^^^^B 

' ^^^^1 

■■«*&*^  V^J^^B 

1 

g 

B 

9 

I 

Ir  v'^'slS^sfl 

Jfn< 

^^^^H^3^  ..^s^^Bf 

MAJOR-GENERAL    ROBB. 

iGaU  &■  Pddm 


MAJOR-GENERAL    PULTENEY. 

lElliot  &  Fry 

mere  depots.  It  was  therefore  settled  that 
the  •  home  battalion  shovild  consist  of 
three  sets  of  men  destined  for  three  annual 
drafts  of  150  each,  to  be  sent  out  as  each  set 
becomes  qualified,  plus  300  men  who  would 
grow  to  maturity  in,  and  remain  throughout 
their  service  with,  the  home  battalion,  which 
without  them  would  be  in  the  condition  de- 
scribed by  Lord  Wolseley  as  that  of  a  "  squeezed 
lemon." 

All  this  administrative  and  actuarial  work 
had  been  reduced  to  a  science  by  the  recruiting 
branch,  and  short  of  disturbing  reforms  the 
system  worked  with  a  certainty  that  wovild 
hardly  be  credible  under  an  app>arently  hap- 
hazard system  of  voluntary  enlistment,  were 
it  not  that  the  laws  of  probability  act  with 
the  greater  certainty'  when  the  numbers  dealt 
with  are  large  and  the  causes  influencing  them 
manifold,  diverse,  and  independent. 

In  the  case  of  the  Expeditionary  Force  as 
it  stood  at  the  Declaration  of  War  in  August 
1914,  the  far-reaching  effect  of  the  previous 
disturbances  was  completely  neutralized  by 
two  simple  expedients — the  lowering  of  the 
foreign  service  age  limit  to  19  and  the  abolition 
of  the  mounted  infantry,  which  was  replaced 
by  additional  cavalry,  made  available  by  with- 
drawals of  Imperial  troops  from  South  Africa  in 
1912-13.  The  latter  step  alone  meant  that  per- 
haps 50  picked  men  per  battaUon  remained 
with     their  units,     and      the    former    made 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


137 


available  100'  to  200  men  per  battalion 
who  would  have  been  too  immature  for  a  tropical 
or  sub -tropical  war.  Mobilization  therefore  was 
carried  through  without  a  hitch,  and  the 
Special  Reserve  battalions  were  at  once  ready 
to  absorb  the  surplus  Regular  reservists. 

In  the  case  of  the  Guards,  who  were  not 
employed  on  foreign  service  in  peace,  there  was 
no  draft  question  to  complicate  matter^ 
The  term  of  service  therefore  was  three  arid 
nine  years,  and  an  enormous  Reserve  was 
thereby  created.*  » 

The  Royal  Artillery  and  the  Royal  Engineers 
were  each  a  single  corps.  Men  enlisted  for 
Garrison  Artillery  could  not  be  posted  to  mounted 
corps,  and  in  the  Engineers  there  was  an  ela- 
borate classification  of  men  according  to  their 
trades.  But  apart  from  these  complications 
drafting  presented  no  problems  for  the  sciemtific 
arms,  indeed  no  Engineer  units  at  all  were 
stationed  in  India. f 

In  the  cavalry  of  the  line  men  were  enlisted 
for  the  "  corps  "  of  Hussars,  Dragoons,  &c., 
and  allowed  to  express  preference  for  particular 
regiments  within  these  corps.    This  arrangement 


•In  all  calculations  of  Eeserve  strength  it  is  important  to  note, 
on  the  authority  of  Sir  C.  Harris,  the  Assistant  Financial  Secretary 
of  the  War  Office,  that  "  wastage,"  year  for  year,  was  not  appre- 
ciably greater  in  the  case  of  reservists  than  in  that  of  men  with  the 
Colours. 

tHad  some  grouping  of  infantry  regiments  been  practicable 
the  example  of  the  Koyal  Artillery  shows  that  many  if  not 
most  of  the  complicatioas  previously  described,  would  have  been 
removed.  But  this  reform,  though  suggested  and  supported  by 
high  authority,  failed  to  penetrate  the  strong  waits  of  the  regimental 
castle. 


GENERAL    SIR    IAN    HAMILTON. 

lEUiott  S-  Frt 


LT.-GENERAL    SIR    DOUGLAS    HAIG. 

U-  RusseU  &  Sons 

at  once  removed  most  of  the  complications 
of  drafting,  and  as  cavalry  is  an  arm  always 
maintained  on  a  high  peace  footing,  there 
were  no  serious  changes  of  establishment  to 
be  prepared  for  when  units  went  abroad. 
In  consequence,  the  mobilization  of  cavalry 
regiments  at  home  presented  no  special  diffi- 
culty. Each  regiment,  on  proceeding  on  active 
service,  left  behind  it  a  reserve  squadron 
which  absorbed  recruits  and  surplus  reservists 
and  continued  to  feed  its  unit  throughout  the 
war,  in  the  same  way  as  a  special  reserve  unit 
of  infantry.* 

In  the  horse  mobilization  of  the  mountea 
branches  both  of  the  Field  Force  and  of  the 
Territorial  Army  there  was  the  same  thorough- 
ness and  attention  to  detail.  Whereas  in  the 
Sotith  African  War  the  lack  of  system  had  been 
quite  as  marked  in  the  matter  of  horses  as  in 
the  matter  of  men,  when  the  European  War 
broke  out  it  found  the  authorities  in  all  grades 
prepared  to  deal  with  the  situation,  for  the 
, rapid  growth  of  motor  traction  in  the  inter- 
vening years  had  drawn  public  attention  to  the 
horsing  problem.  The  peace  establishments  of 
the  Army  in  horses  had  been  increased,  the 
system  of  "  boarding-out  "f  had  been  intro- 
duced, first  tentatively  and  then  on  a  larger 


*  There  was  no  draft-flnding  Special  Reserve  Cavalry. 

t  Boarded-out  horses  were  Gk)vemment-dwned  animals  additional 
to  the  ordinary  peace  establishment,  which  were  lent  to  farmers 
and  others  and  maintained  by  them. 


138 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


scale,  civilian  buyers  had  been  appointed  in 
readiness  for  emergency,  and  above  all  a  really 
useful  census  of  horses  had  been  taken. 

Built  up  on  these  principles  of  organization, 
the  Regular  Army  on  October  1,  1913,  was 
distributed  as  shown  below  : — 


Militia  elements  of  the  force  was  the  "  regular 
establishment,"  which  carried  on  the  work  of 
the  regimental  depot  and  trained  the 
recruits  there.  This  force,  however,  had  in 
peace  times  failed  to  attract  sufficient  recruits. 
It  was  generally  thought  by  the  classes  likely 


DISTEIBT7TI0N     OF    THJfi.    UKGULAK 

ARMY. 

Infantry, 

Cavalry. 

Horse* 

Field 

Artillery. 

Garrison  Engl- 
Artillery.       neers 

Flying 
Corps. 

A.S.C. 

Depart- 
ments. 

Colonial 
troops. 

Indian 
tnx>ps  in 
Imp.pay. 

Total. 

ON  HOME  ESTABLISHMENT 
United  Kingdom 

Ireland 

Channel  Islands 

51.442 

14.409 

1.355 

10,573 
2,052 

13.640 
4.072 

6,728 
733 
299 

5.978 

1.277 

35 

.    822 

4.848 

889 

11 

5,161 

850 

35 

- 

~ 

99.192 

2^-.282 
1.735 

Total 

67.206 

12,625 

17.712 

7.760 

7.290 

822 

5.748 

6,046 

-      I      - 

125.209 

ON     INDIAN      ESTABLISH- 
MENT             

54.584 

5.595 

10.971 

4.463 

377 

- 

- 

538 

—    ■ 

602 

77.130 

ON  COLONTAT.  ESTABLISH- 
MENT. 
Gibraltar 

Malta 

Egypt  and  Cyprus 
CeJ-lon.  Straits  Settlements  and 
China  Stations    . . 

South  Africa 

Various,  on  passage.  &c. 

1.830 
4.172 
4.543 

4,069 
3,660 
3,168 

633 
1.137 

180 
453 

1.387 

1.577 

193 

1.699 
292 
846 

396 
410 
163 

458 
520 
399 

-^ 

85 
109 
104. 

120 

282 

57 

179 
229 
217 

300 

482 
270 

437 

521 
2.867 

200 
6,267 

3.877 
6.934 
6.233 

13.434 
6.826 
7.607 

Total 

21.442 

1.770 

633 

5,994 

2.346 
10.013 

— 

757 

1,677 

3,825 

6.467  ,    44.911 

Grand  Total 

143.232 

19.990 

29.316 

18.217 

822 

6.505 

8.261 

•3.825 

.     1 
7.069    247.250 

1 

The  Army  Reserve,  the  strength  of  which 
had  fluctuated  considerably  in  consequence 
of  the  varioiLS  changes  in  the  terms  of  colour 
service,  consisted  of  : — 

STRENGTH    OF    THE     AEMY    RESERVE 
ON  OCTOBER  1.  1913. 


A. 

B. 

D. 

Total. 

Cavalry 

Horse  and  Field  Artillery 
Garrison  Artillery 

Engineers 

Infantry 

Various 

670 

426 

4.234 

493 

6.967 

13.694 

6.023 

4,079 

62.510 

10.823 

3.708 

4.645 

259 

959 

23.382 

2.218 

10.675 
19.009 
6.282 
5.464 
90.126 
13.534 

Total 

5.823 

104.096 

35,171 

145.  090 

Section  A  consisted  of  Reservists  who  had 
undertaken  to  rejoin  the  colours  if  required 
on  an  emergency  short  of  general  mobilization ; 
Section  B  (with  C)  comprised  all  who  had  enlisted 
for  short  service  (3-7  years)  and  had  discharged 
their  active  duties.  Section  D  consisted  of  men 
who  after  the  expiry  of  their  12  years  total  term 
had  re-enUsted  for  a  further  four  years  in  the 
Reserve. 

The  Special  Reserve,  which  consisted  almost 
entirely  of  infantry,*  was  created  from  the  re- 
mains of  the  MiUtia  to  act  as  the ' '  Regular  Militia' 
battaUons  had  acted  in  the  Napoleonic  wars,  as 
feeders  for  the  Line  in  war.  All  ranks  were  Uable 
for  foreign  service  in  war,  and  the  term  of  enlist- 
ment  was   six  years.     Incorporated   with   the 

•At  one  tune  a  large  force  of  Field  Artillery  Special  Reservists 
was  enlisted  for  the  manning  of  ammunition  columns.  But  these 
were  no  longer  required  when  Army  Service  Corps  motor  transport 
took  over  this  duty. 


to  join  that  pressure  was  brought  to  bear  on 
"  S.R."  recruits  while  at  the  depot  to  enter  the 
Regular  Army ;  and  in  fact  many  thousands  of 
men  annually  joined  the  Special  Reserve  in 
order  to  bring  up  their  physical  and  other 
quahfications  to  the  Regular  standard  before 
passing  into  the  Line,  or  in  order  to  see  "  how 
they. liked  the  life"  before  committing  them- 
selves finally.  These  men  were,  of  course, 
potential  Regulars,  and  not  part-trained 
Reservists. 

The  Territorial  Force  since  its  reconstruction 
had  had  a  troubled  history.  Upon  it  had 
centred  many  criticisms  that  might  have  been 
directed  against  the  Army  system  as  a  whole. 
Its  weaknesses  were  naturally  more  in  evi- 
dence than  those  of  the  Special  Reser\"e,  or 
those  which  were  the  outcome  of  drafting 
difficulties  in  the  Regular  Arn[iy.  Since  it 
was  pre-eminently  the  national  army,  embody- 
ing the  idea  of  duty  service,  those  who 
advocated  and  worked  for  compulsory  military 
service  focussed  their  efforts  upon  it.  Whether 
this  volume  of  criticism  affected  its  material 
training  is  doubtful,  but  at  times  certainly 
it  did  affect  the  moral  of  the  force,  and  from 
first  to  last  it  almost  controlled  the  recruiting. 
Further,  the  local  recruiting  authorities  were  in 
many  cases  too  much  absorbed  in  the  business 
administration  of  the  units  under  their  charge 
to  be  able  to  deal  with  recruiting  in  the 
more     scientific     spirit     of     the      Recruiting) 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


139 


BRIGADIER   GENERAL 
SIR    PHILIP    CHETWODE. 

[H.  Walter  Bameft. 

Brancn  of  the  War  Office ;  unnecessarily 
wild  fluctuations  of  intake  —  alternate 
"  booms  "  and  "  slumps  " — were  the  result. 
In  some  years  one-seventh,  in  others  as 
much  as  one -third  of  the  Territorial  Force 
would  be  due  for  discharge,  and  the  problem 
of  making  good  the  deficiency  in  advance 
of  its  occurrence  was  a  hard  one.  In  the 
result  the  force  was  considerably  short  of  its 
peace  establishment  of  315,438,  though  it  was 
never  much  below  250,000. 


The  term  of  service  in  the  Territorial  Force  waa 
four  years,  re-engagements  being  allowed.  The 
training  liabilities  were  ten  to  twenty  drills 
per  annum,  two  weeks'  continuous  training  in 
camp,  and  a  musketry  course.  When  the 
Territorial  Force  was  created,  it  was  intended  to 
form  a  Reserve  for  it  as  soon  as  possible,  and 
to  that  end  re-engagements  of  time-expired 
men  were  at  first  discouraged.  Owing,  how- 
ever, to  inelastic  regulations  by  which  com- 
paratively few  men  were  qualified  to  pass  into 
this  Reserve*,  and  to  the  sudden  popularity  of 
the  new  National  Reserve,  the  Territorial  Force 
Reserve  was  little  more  than  a  list  of  officers 
who,  while  leaving  their  regiments  on  change 
of  residence,  &c.,  wished  to  continue  in  the  force 
against  the  day  of  mobilization.  Far  more 
satisfactory  was  the  condition  of  two  other 
auxiliaries  of  the  Territorial  Force,  the  National 
Reserve  and  the  Voluntary  Aid  Detachments. 
The  former  munbered  over  200,000  old  soldiers 
and  sailors  divided  into  three  categories,  (1) 
registered  for  general  service  ;  (2)  registered 
for  home  service ;  (3)  not  available  for 
service  under  arms.  The  provision  of  officers 
for  these  various  forces  was  regulated  thus  :- — 

In  the  case  of  the  Regular  Army,  officers  were 
appointed  (a)  from  cadets  trained  at  the  Royal 
Military  Academy,  Woolwich  (for  Artillery 
and  Engineers),  or  at  the  Royal  Military  College, 
Sandhurst  (for  other  arms),  to  which  in- 
stitutions they  were  admitted  in  some  cases  by 
Governmental  or  headmasters'  nominations,  in 
the  rest  by  competitive  examination   ;  (6)  from 


•Another  branch  of  this  Reserve,  which  was  provided  for  but 
never  formed,  was  the  "  Technical  "  Reserve,  a  register  of  men 
available  as  local  guides,  superintendents  of  works,  tc. 


VIEW    OF    SALISBURY    PLAIN. 


[DaUy  Mirroh 


140 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


among  University  students,  after  exaniination 
and  preliminary  military  training  in  the  Officers 
Training  Corps  ;  (c)  from  Colonial  candidates 
trained  at  the  Royal  Military  Colleges  of  Canada, 
Australia,  &c. 

In  the  case  of  the  Special  Reserve  and  thei 
Territorial  Force,  officers  were  appoiated  either 
after  service  in  the  Officers  Training  Corps 
or  direct  from  civil  Ufe.  The  O.T.C.  was 
composed  of  senior  division  contingents  belong- 
ing to  the  Universities  and  junior  division  con- 
tingents belonging  to  the  public  schools.  The 
total  strength  of  cadets  in  the  O.T.C.  was 
approximately  25,000,  of  whom  about  5,000  in 
th3  senior  division  were  undergraduates  of 
mihtary  age  available  for  immediate  service. 
The  officers  of  the  corps  were  drawn  from  the 
Special  Reserve  and  the  Territorial  Force. 
There  were  practical  and  written  examina- 
tions in  military  subjects  for  cadets,  as  well 
as  drill  and  camp  training. 

In  the  general  organization  of  the  Army  the 
principle  had  been  adopted  since  the  South 
African  War  of  separating  as  far  aa  possible 
command  and  training  from  administration. 
To  that  end  the  General  Staff  of  the  Army 
was  made  distinct  from  other  branches  of 
headquarters  and  staffs ;  the  axiministration, 
equipment,  &c.,  of  the  Territorial  Force  was 
placed  in  the  hands  of  a  County  Association, 
and  that  of  the  Regular  Army  in  the 
hands  of  a  special  general  officer  subordinate 
to  the  Conmaands -in-Chief  in  each  region,  but 
endowed  with  wide  powers  of  Administration. 
The  central  administration  of  the.  Army  was 
civided  into  four  main  departments.  The 
General-Staff  dealt  with  operations,  the  Adjutant- 
General's  Staff  with  personnel,  the  Quarter- 
master-General's with  materiel,  and  the  Staff 
of  the  Master-General  of  the  Ordnance  with 
armament. 

The  Army  at  home,  including  the  Special 
Reserve  and  the  Territorial  Force,  was  grouped 
by  divisions  and  brigades  into  large  "  com- 
mands "  imder  generals  commanding-in-chief, 
each  of  whom  had  under  him  a  general  staff 
branch,  under  a  brigadier-general  or  colonel, 
and  a  major-general  or  brigadier-general  in 
charge  of  Administration.  The  London  district 
was  separately  organized.  For  recruiting  and 
record  purposes,  or,  so  far  as  concerned  the 
Regular  Army  and  Special  Reserve,  the  Com- 
mands, except  Aldershot,  were  sub-divided 
jnto  districts.  Under  the  Army  Covmcil  and 
directly  reporting  to  it  were  the  Inspector- 
General  Home  Forces  and  the  Inspector- 
General     Oversea     Forces     (who     wsis     also 


Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Mediterranean  Com- 
mand, but  had  no  jurisdiction  in  India).  These 
officers  with  their  staffs  were  charged  with  the 
duty  of  constantly  moving  about  amongst  the 
troops  and  satisfying  themeelves  of  the  efficiency 
of  their  training  for  war. 

Such  being  the  general  organization  of  the 
British  Army  at  home,  we  now  come  to  consider 
the  fighting  organization  of  its  parts  as  con- 
stituted for  militarj^  operations. 

The  unit  of  infantry  was  the  battalion,  com- 
manded by  a  lieutenant-colonel.  In  1913  the 
previous  organization  of  eight  companies 
of  about  120  each  had  been  replaced  by  one  of 
four  companies  of  about.  240,  commanded  by 
a  mounted  officer,  major  or  captain,  with  a 
second  captain,  and  a  subaltern  in  comxaand  of 
each  of  the  four  "  platoons  "  of  60  men  into 
which  the  company  was  divided.  The  battalion 
included,  further,  a  machine  gun  section  of  two 
guns,  a  section  of  signallers,  medical  officer  and 
bearers,  &c.  Its  first  line  transport,  which 
immediately  accompanied  the  troops  on  the 
march,  comprised  eight  company  ammunition 
mules  and  six  ammunition  carts  (one  of  which 
was  for  the  machine  guns),  two  tool  carts, 
two  water  carts,  four  travelling  kitchens  (one 
per  company),  and  a  medical  cart.  The 
armament  was  the  "  short  Lee-Enfield  "  of  1903 
and  bayonet.  The  men's  equipment  was 
made  not  of  leather  but  of  strong  webbing,  of 
the  same  grey -green  colour  as  the  im.iforms. 
The  baggage  and  supply  wagons  of  the  infantry 
formed  part  of  the  Train.  The  brigade  of  in- 
fantry consisted  of  four  battalions  under  a 
Brigadier-General,  which  had  a  small  reserve 
of    tools,    and     also    a    brigade    ammunition 


ARMY    MOTOR    CYCLISTS. 

iSport  Or  Ctntral 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


141 


LONDON    SCOTTISH    RIFLES. 


reserve  formed    by   assembling    some    of    the 
battalion  e^rts. 

The  cavalry  regiment  consisted  of  three 
squadrons,  each  of  about  150  sabres,  divided 
into  four  troops,  and  a  regimental  machine  gun 
section  of  two  guns.  The  squadron  was  com- 
manded by  a  major,  with  a  captain  as  his 
second.  The  first  line  transport  included 
squadron  baggage  wagons,  squadron  ammuni- 
tion carts,  and  squadron  tool  carts,  and 
for  the  regiment  a  wagon-carrying  raft  equip- 
ment for  the  hasty  crossing  of  streams,  and  a 
cook's  vehicle  corresponding  in  cooking 
capacity  to  about  two  of  the  travelling  kitchens 
used  by  the  infantry. 

The  Cavalry  Brigade  consisted  of  three  such 
regiments.  The  armament  of  the  cavalry 
was  sword,  rifle,  and  in  some  cases  lance.  The 
equipment  was  light  and  stripped  to  bare 
essentials,  but  the  cloth  puttees  worn  by  the 
men  since  the  loose  individual  skirmishing 
of  the  South  African  War  were  less  satisfactory 
for  the  knee-to-knee  charge  that  was  to  be 
expected  in  European  warfare.  The  Field 
Artillery  unit  was  the  so-called  "  brigade " 
(corresponding  to  the  "  group  "  of  foreign 
armies  and  to  be  differentiated  from  the  brigade 
in  the  larger  sense).  Each  brigade,  whether  of 
18-pounder  q.f.  guns  or  of  4*lin.  q.f.  howit- 
zers, comprised  a  brigade  headquarters  with 
telephone  equipment,  and  three  six-gun  bat- 
teries. For  each  gvtn  there  were  two  ammuni- 
tion wagons,  one  of  which,  in  action,  was 
placed  close  beside  the  gun  itself.  Both 
guns  and  wagons  were  six-horsed  flexible  double 
carriages,  composed  of  body  (or  gun-carriage) 
and  limber,  which  gave  them  a  balance,  and 
therefore  a  mobility,  which  compared  with 
that  of  the  "  General  Service  "  wagon  in  much 
the  same  way  as  a  hansom  compares  with  a 
"  four-wheeler." 


In  the  Horse  Artillery  the  "  brigade  "  con- 
sisted of  two  batteries  only.  The  distinctive 
mark  of  this  branch  was  speed,  owing  to  the 
lighter  gun  (12.poimder  q.f.),  and  to  the  fact 
that  most  of  the  gunners  instead  of  being  carried 
on  the  gun,  gim  limber,  or  first  wagon,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  Field  Artillery,  rode  separately. 

Heavy  Artillery  also  accompanied  the  field 
army.  A  heavy  battery  consisted  of  four  60- 
pounder  guns,*  manned  by  the  garrison  artil- 
lery and  drawn  at  a  walk  or  slow  trot  by  eight 
heavy  draught  horses  apiece. 

To  esich  "  brigade  "  of  field  or  horse  artillery 
guns  was  attached  a  "  brigade  ammunition 
column,"  which  provided  a  third  full  wagon 
for  each  gun,  and  also  a  reserve  of  rifle  ammvini- 
tion  for  the  infantry.  The  howitzer  brigade 
and  heavy  battery  ammunition  columns  were 
similar,  except  that  they  provided  no  rifle 
anununition.  Another  reserve  of  ammunition 
behind  this  -was,  provided  by  the  Divisional 
Ammunition  Column,  this  also  vinder  artillery 
charge,  and  behind  this  again  was  the  Motor 
Ammunition  Park,  to  be  alluded  to  presently. 

The  field  units  of  the  Royal  Engineers  were  : — 
The  "  field  squadrons  "  or  field  troops,  the  signal 
squadrons  and  signal  troops  attached  to  cavalry 
divisions  or  brigades,  the  field  companies  and 
signal  companies  attached  to  divisions,  and 
the  bridging  trains  and  signal  sections  at  the 
disposal  of  commanders  of  higher  formations. 
The  details  of  the  Signal  Service  cannot  here  be 
described,  and  it  must  suffice  to  mention  that 
the  units  of  this  service  included  wireless 
telephone  and  telegraph  operators  with  their 
equipment,  as  well  as  flag  and  lamp  signallers 
and  dispatch  riders,  mounted  on  horses  or 
motor-bicycles.  Wireless  was  employed 
chiefly  to  connect  General  Headquarters  with 


*Not  howitzers,  ae  was  almost  always  the  case  in  tbe  Continental 
heavy  artillery. 


142 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


the  fast-moving  cavalry  in  advance ;  telegraphs 
(air-hne  or  groiind  cable)  were  for  general 
work,  and  telephones  for  communication  on 
the  battlefield  itself. 

The  bridging  trains  -were  simply  a  great 
mobile  reserve  of  pontoons  and  trestles,  to  be 
used  bj'  the  field  companies  when  the  bridging 
equipment  of  the  latter  proved  insufficient. 
The  field  squadrons,  field  troops,  and  field  com- 
panies were  the  most  important  and  generally 
useful  of  the  engineer  organizations.  They 
provided     for    bridging,    for    demolitions,    for 


Such  were  the  constituent  parts  of  the 
division.  The  division  itself  was  commanded  by 
a  major-general,  whose  staff,  hke  all  higher 
staffs,  was  divided  into  a  genei»al  staff  branch,  an 
adjutant-general's  branch,  and  a  quartermaster- 
general's  branch.  It  consisted  of  throe  infantry 
brigades,  three  [field  artillery  brigades, 
one  field  howitzer  brigade  and  one  heavy 
battery,  with  a  divisional  signal  company, 
two  field  companies  Royal  Engineers,  and 
one  squadron  of  cavalry,  in  all  18,073  men, 
5,592  horses,  76  guns,  and  24  machine  guns. 


I  NFANXRV^ 


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S  ED  El  Bearers  El  El  El    El  El  El 


D/y/s/ona/  Train 


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(3  br/gac/e  co/7?pa/7/es  ar?c/  /  /7e3c/g'c/art€rs^ 
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ISS        ^S        SS        ^12 


expert  supervision  of  infantry  working  parties, 
and  for  water  supply. 

The  Army  Service  Corps  units  in  the  field 
fall  into  two  distinct  branches,  the  horsed 
"  trains "  and  the  mechanical  transport 
"  columns." 

The  medical  service  in  the  field  centred 
around  the  Field  Ambulance.  Each  unit  of  that 
name  included  three  "  tent "  and  three  "  bearer  " 
subdivisions,  each  self-contained  and  there- 
fore separable  from  the  rest  for  the  benefit 
of  outlying  detachments,  flying  columns,  &c. 


The  catalogue  of  the  necessary  auxiliaries  to 
the  fighting  troops,  in  itself  meaningless  to 
readers  unacquainted  with  the  military  system, 
included  a  complete  and  up-to-date  organization, 
which  we  may  briefly  describe  under  the  three 
headings  of  baggage  and  supply,  ammunition, 
and  medical  aid.  But  before  it  is  possible  to 
do  so  a  few  words  must  be  said  as  to  the  working 
of  the  lines  of  communication  of  an  army. 

Perhaps  no  Army  in  the  world  had  its  lines 
of  communication  services  so  well  organized 
in  peace  as  the  British.     The  reason  is  simple 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


143 


60-POUNDER    IN    ACTION. 


IS  port  fir  General. 


enough,  viz.,  that  it  was  accustomed  to  fight 
in  ill-developed  countries  where  the  Army 
must  create  the  reso\irces  of  civilization  before 
it  cotild  vise  them.  Duties  on  the  line  of  com- 
munication were  administrative,  controlled 
by  an  Inspector-General  of  Communications  ; 
and  defensive  (for  the  protection  of  the  line 
itself),  controlled  by  the  "  commander  of  L. 
of  C.  Defences."  At  the  safer  end  of  the  line 
lay  the  base,  generally  a  port,  and  at  frequent 
intervals  along  the  line  were  small  posts  for 
traffic  control.  Sometimes  an  advanced  depot 
was  formed  at  some  distance  up  the 
line,  where  emergency  reserves  of  stores 
were  accimiulated,  but  the  "  line "  extended 
far  in  front  of  it.  At "  railhead,"  the  variable 
point  at  which  railway  traffic  ceased,  there 
were  no  accumulations  of  stores,  a  day's 
requirements  being  sent  daily  by  train  to  be 
taken  thence  by  the  motor  lorries  of  the  "  supply 
columns  "  to  the  troops. 

This    motor-transport    was   a   new    system, 
unlike  that  of  any  other  army,  and    had  been 


introduced  in  1911.  In  it  a  complete  break 
had  been  made  with  the  traditions  of  the  old 
horse-and-cart  supply  system.  Horse  trans- 
port was  now  used  purely  for  distributing, 
the  conveyance  of  supplies  to  the  areas  occupied 
by  the  troops  being  performed  wholly  by  motor 
transport. 

The  daily  run  of  the  motor  lorry  being  taken 
at  90  nules,  the  army  could  advance  to  a  dis- 
tance from  its  railhead  of  45  miles — or  rather 
to  a  distance  such  that  "  refilling  point," 
where  the  horsed  trains  took  over  the  contents 
of  the  lorries  daily  for  distribution,  should  not 
be  more  than  45  miles.  But  if  a  new  and  nearer 
railhead  could  be  chosen  for  next  day  this 
distance  could  be  by  so  much  exceeded.* 
Tbe  new  system  thus  gave  greater  range  and 
flexibility  to  the  army's  operations.  It  also 
cleared  the  roads  in  fear  of  the  troops  of  the 
vast  convoys  of  horsed  wagons  which  formerly 
gravely   impeded   the   army's  manceuvres. 

*As  there  were  no  stores  accumulated  at  raiUiead.  this  iwint 
could  be  changed  at  four  to  five  boujB'  notice. 


Im^  «*i€^ 


''MWVr«»*«t»<» /  rm'c 


IRISH    GUARDS. 


Import  6-  General. 


144 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


DUBLIN    LIGHT    INFANTRY. 


[Sporl  &  General. 


To  give  a  practical  example.  On  a  Thursday 
evening  the  men  of  an  infantry  battalion  woiild 
have  Friday's  bread  and  cheese  in  their  haver- 
sacks {pliis  a  preserved  ration  for  emergencies), 
and  the  travelling  kitchens  (called  "  cookers  ") 
Friday's  meat,  groceries,  &c.  At  that  time  the 
wagons  of  the  train  allotted  to  the  service  of  the 
unit  would  be  empty,  waiting  to  meet  the  motor 
"  supply  columns  "  on  Friday.  These  supply 
columns  themselves  would  be  at  railhead, 
waiting  for  the  rations  to  be  railed  thither  from 
down  the  line.  At  3  a.m.  or  so  on  Friday 
these  railway  trains  would  have  discharged 
their  contents  and  the  lorries  would  be  on  their 
way  at  a  speed  of  ten  miles  an  hour  to  meet  the 
empty  wagons  of  the  train  at  "  refilling  point." 
Thtis  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  war  it 
had  become  possible  for  fresh  meat  and  bread 
to  be  supplied  to  a  distant  army.  The  meat 
that  our  battalion  would  eat  on  Friday  even- 


ing was  probably  alive  on  Wednesday  morn- 
ing 100  miles  away  down  the  line. 

This,  however  was  not  the  only,  or  indeed 
the  principal,  method  of  supply.  As  far  as 
possible  the  resources  of  the  country  traversed 
by  the  army  were  utilized  by  requisitioning. 
Until  a  few  years  before  the  war  the  British 
Army,  with  its  18th-century  tradition  of 
regarding  the  civilian  as  a  spectator  in  the 
Government's  wars,  and  its  experience  of  wild 
colonial  campaigns,  had  been  qmte  unfamiliar 
with  this  resource ;  but  latterly  much  study 
had  been  devoted  to  it  and  ample  provision  of 
motor-cars  had  been  made  for  the  requisition- 
ing officers. 

The  replacement  of  ammunition  was  con- 
ducted upon  a  somewhat  similar  system. 
At  varioiis  posts  along  the  line  of  communica- 
tion were  depots  of  the  Army  Ordnance  Corps, 
which   forwarded   anuniuiition   as   required   to 


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Wm 

QUEEN'S    OWN    OXFORD    HUSSARS. 


[Sport  (jr  Central, 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAM. 


145 


1 

W  0    ,. •         ^ 

k 

™ 

r  ^  ■^- 

^^^Hj 

4 

mtmmmm  \ 

■ 

f 

GENERAL 


SIR    CHARLES    DOUGLAS. 

[Russell  &  Sons. 


railhead,  where  the  motor-lorries  of  the  divi- 
sional ammunition  park  took  it  over  for  con- 
veyance   to    the    horsed    distributing    agency 


(corresponding  to  the  trains  above-mentioned  ) 
called  1-ie  Divisional  Ammunition  Column. 
This  column  was  generally  broken  up  into 
sections,  each  following  at  some  distance  one 
of  the  artillery  brigade  ammunition  columns, 
which  were  the  actual  issuers  to  batteries  and 
to  infantry  brigades. 

In  both  these  cases  the  governing  principle 
was  that  no  one  should  have  to  go  back 
for  food,  and  no  one  to  retire  to  fetch 
ammunition.  In  the  medical  service  the  same 
thing  is  observable — persistent  effort  to  keep 
the  front  in  working  condition.  In  this  case 
the  principle  was  that  of  "  evacuation."  The 
nearer  a  hospital  to  the  front,  the  clearer  it 
was  kept.  This  of  course  served  both  the 
interests  of  the  army,  which,  in  theory,  should 
never  be  compelled  to  forgo  its  field  ambulances 
in  an  advance  after  battle,  and  those  of  the 
wounded  man,  who  was  removed  as  far  as  his 
condition  would  allow  from  the  area  of  conflict 
and  hiirry,  to  recover  in  qmet.  The  working  of 
the  organization  was  briefly  this  : — A  wounded 
man*  was  taken  by  the  regimental  stretcher- 
bearers  (the  bandsmen  of  peace  time)  to  the 
"  aid  post,"  where  the  regimental  medical  officer 

•Every   soldier  had    a  "first  field  dressing"  in  his  pocket. 


GORDON    HIGHLANDERS. 


[Sport  (Jr  Ctntral, 


146 


THE    T'iMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


A    MAXIM    GUN     ON    NEW     TRIPOD. 


[Sport  &■  General. 


attended  to  him.  To  these  aid  posts  came  up  the 
bearer  subdivisions  of  the  field  am.bulance, which 
conveyed  the  patient  to  an  "  Advanced  Dressing 
Station  ' '  formed  by  a  Tent  Sub  division.  Thence 
he  was  conveyed  after  treatment,  and  perhaps 
a  day's  rest,  by  the  anxbulance  wagons  (bearer 
subdivision)  to  meet  a  party  from  the  "  clearing 
hospital,"  a  large  field  hospital  at  some  con- 
venient point  near  railhead.  It  was  the 
business  of  this  hospital,  as  its  name  shows, 
to  evacuate  the  wounded  from  the  field  am- 
bvilances,  which  it  did  by  any  available  means 


of  transport — coiintry  carts,  canal  boats, 
railway  trains,  motor- lorries  of  the  supply 
columns,  or  ammunition  parks.  Once  on  the 
line  of  communications,  the  patient  could  be 
dealt  with  by  stationeiry  hospitals,  the  ^general 
hospital  at  the  base,  or  convalescent  oanips, 
as  required,  or  sent  back  to  Great  Britain  by 
hospital  train  and  hospital  ship. 

The  organization  of  a  cavalry  division 
consisted  of  four  brigades,  four  batteries  of 
horse  artillery,  and  auxiliary  services,  as  shown 
in  the  following  table  : — 


S(]uadrons  — » 

Machine      _ 
Cun  SecHons 

Signal  Troopi- 


000   000    0l£l5 


Brigade  oFJRjts. 
O 


000  000  000 


Brigade  of  J  Rgts. 


2  "Brigades "  Horse 
ill  ill    ill  ill    AriiUery 

Kl      ^    a/77,  cols. 


P:^  Field  Squadron  R.E. 

EXI  Signal  Stjuadron 

yCavalry  Field 
Ambulance 


000  000   000 


Brigade  oFZ  Rgis. 


Wm\vMV^  000 


Brigade  oF  3Rjls. 


THE    TIMES  HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


147 


MAJOR-GENERAL     SIR    ARCHIBALD 
MURRAY,  [Speaight. 

In  sorae  cases  cavalry  brigades  were  formed 
without  being  allotted  to  a  cavalry  division. 
Such  brigades  were  given  a  battery  of  horse 
artillery,     and    enough    of    other    services    to 


render  them  self- supporting  and  self-contained 
bodies. 

The  food  and  anununition  systems  differed 
from  those  of  the  infantry  divisions,  in  that  the 
motor-lorries  delivered  '^ood  direct  to  the 
"  cookers  "  of  the  regiments  and  ammunition 
direct  to  the  brigade  ammunition  coltmins, 
there  being  no  "  train  "  or  divisional  ammuni- 
tion column.  The  ambulances,  too,  were 
differently  organized,  to  provide  for  the  special 
needs  of  cavalry,  which  had  to  fight  over  wide 
areas  and  at  great  distances  in  front  of  the  main 
body.* 

The  war  strength  of  a  cavalry  division  was 
9,269  men  and  9,815  horses,  24  guns,  and  24 
machine  guns. 

The  whole  Expeditionary  Force  as  organized 
in  1914  consisted  of  six  divisions,  one  cavalry 
division,  and  one  (or  two)  unallotted  cavalry 
brigades,  with  additional  troops  styled  "  army 
troops "  at  the  disposal  of  the  higher  com- 
manders, besides  the  line  of  commvmication 
troops  both  for  administration  and  for  the  de- 
fence of  the  line.     The  army  troops  included 


•It  should  be  noted  that  all  baggage  and  supply  vehicles  of  cavalry 
were  drawn  by  four  horses  of  the  "  vanner  "  or  ordinary  military 
type,  whereas  those  of  the  greater  part  of  tiie  army  were  drawn  by 
two  heavy  cart  horses  each. 


BRITISH    TROOPS    AT    HAVRE. 


COai/y  Mirror. 


148 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR 


FIFTH    LANCERS. 


iSpori  &■  General. 


the  squadrons  of  the  Royal  Flying  Corps, 
each  squadron  being  subdivided  into  three 
"  Fhghts "  each  of  four  aeroplanes  with  their 
attendant  motors  and  stores. 

Taken  all  in  all,  the  organization  and  equip- 
ment of  this  force  was  on  a  more  elaborate  scale 
than  that  of  Continental  units  of  corresponding 


strength.  This,  and  the  professional  character 
of  the  Army,  in  no  small  degree  compensated 
for  its  small  numbers,  and  the  German  critic 
who  in  1913  remarked  that  the  British  Ex- 
peditionary Force  was  "  not  an  enemy  to 
be  despised  "  {keine  zu  verachtende  Gegner)  was 
nearer  the  truth  than  perhaps  he  realized 


CHAPTER  IX.. 


THE  ARMIES  OF  THE  DOMINIONS. 


Impobtance  of  Sea  Power  Generally  Understood — Lack  of  Organization  of  Imperial 
Land  Forces — The  Value  of  a  Striking  Force — ^The  Dominions  in  Advance  of  the  Mother 
Country — National  Obligation  Realized  and  Enforced — Democracy  and  National  Service 
— Popularity  and  Success  of  the  Experiment — Canada — An  Army  in  Embryo — Character 
OF  Her  Military  Institutions — The  Australasian  and  New  Zealand  Systems — Defence 
System  of  South  Africa — A  Difficult  Problem — English,  Dutch,  and  Native — 
Frontier  and  Internal  Defence — The  Defence  Act  of  1912 — The  Rally  of  the  Dominions 
— ^Men — Supplies — ^Unanimity  of  Empire. 


WHEN  the  war   broke   out  it  found 
Great  Britain  and  the   Dominions 
organically    vmready,     so    far    at 
least      as     military     preparations 
were  concerned,  to  put  even  a  small  proportion 
of  their  potential  strength  into  the  field. 

The  Navy  was  ready,  as  it  always  had  been 
ready.  There  a  sound  instinct  had  warned 
the  British  peoples  to  maintain  at  all  costs 
the  margin  of  strength  which  was  considered 
necessary.  It  was  a  bare  margin,  reckoned 
merely  by  the  niimber  of  ships  available,  but  it 
was  indefinitely  increased  by  the  spirit  of  their 
crews,  men  who  through  years  of  waiting  had 


always  kept  their  will  fixed  on  the  single  object 

that  of  preparation  for  the  day  of  trial. 

In  a  sense,  too,  the  Navy  was  representative 
of  the  maximum  effort  of  the  whole  British 
peoples.  The  Dominions  had  for  some  time 
recognized  the  debt  they  owed  to  its  protection. 
Australia  had  gone  far  to  complete  a  squadron 
of  her  own.  The  battle  cruiser  New  Zealand, 
the  gift  of  the  Dominion  whose  name  she  bore, 
was  attached  to  the  Home  Fleet.  Canada 
had  made  it  perfectly  clear  some  years  before 
that  she  intended  to  bear  all  that  she  could  of 
the  burden  imposed  on  the  people  of  Great 
Britain  by  the  building  of  new  ships  and  the 


\  \. 


CANADIAN    TROOPS.     THE    QUEEN'S    RIFLES. 
149 


[Daily  Mirror 


150 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


cost  of  their  maintenance  and  equipment. 
Unfortunate  domestic  differences  had  com- 
pelled the  Western  Dominion  to  postpone  her 
offer  to  provide  three  Dreadnoughts  for  the 
British  Fleet.  But  it  was  perfectly  under- 
stood in  the  British  Isles  that  the  will  to  help 
was  there,  even  though  the  power  to  give  it 
concrete  form  had  been  suspended  by  differ- 
ences of  opinion  about  the  exact  shape  which 
the  help  should  take.  South  Africa,  only 
recently  recovered  from  a  period  of  over- 
whelming financial  depression,  and  still  more 
recently  engaged  in  the  task  of  forming  and 
establishing  the  Union  of  her  four  self-governing 
Colonies,  had  not  been  able  to  do  much  for  the 
Navy.  But  she  had  contributed  yearly  a  sum 
towards  its  upkeep,  small  in  amount  but 
intended  as  a  proof  that  she  had  not  forgotten 
what  was  due  from  her.  There  was  never 
any  doubt  that  when  the  Union  of  South 
Africa  found  itself  in  a  position  to  do  something 
more  substantial  it  would  be  done  willingly 
and  quickly,  for  no  Dominion  owed  more, 
or  was  more  conscious  of  its  debt,  to  the  Navy 
than  South  Africa. 

There  had,  then,  in  the  years  before  the  war 
been  many  signs  that  Naval  Defence  would, 
if  time  was  given,  be  organized  on  a  truly 
Imperial  basis.  There  had  been  no  such  signs 
in  the  case  of  Land  Defence.  No  uniform 
system  of  raisirg  troops  had  been  adopted. 
Elementary  principles  were  matters  of  dispute. 
The  need  of  military  organization  for  the  Empire 
as  a  whole  was  more  often  denied  than  affirmed. 
Even  within  the  British  Isles  popular  opinion 
was,  on  the  whole,  opposed  to  any  effort  to 
provide  Great  Britain  with  an  Army  sufficiently 
strong  to  give  her  an  equal  voice  in  a  Eirropean 
war.  While  the  peoples  of  the  Continent  had 
been  straining  every  nerve  for  years  to  arm 
and  train  every  available  man  for  the 
decisive  day,  Great  Britain  and  the 
Dominions  had  dehberately  abstained  from  any 
such  attempt.  It  was  an  aociom  of  British 
policy  that  what  was  required  for  each  part 
of  the  Empire  should  be  for  internal  defence 
alone,  and  though  it  was  vaguely  admitted 
that  the  Regular  Army  might  be  required 
to  provide  an  Expeditionary  Force,  it  was 
thought  that  this  need  not  be  large  in 
numbers  so  long  as  its  material  was  good,  its 
equipment  efficient,  and  its  transport  adequately 
organized. 

These  negative  theories  were,  of  course, 
based  on  a  principle  thoroughly  sound  in  itself, 
though  limited  in  its  appUcation,  because  its  con- 
sequences inevitably  required  time  to  show  their 
decisiveness.     History  had  taught  the  British 


peoples  that  control  of  the  sea  was  the  first 
essential  of  their  existence  as  a  nation.  That 
secvired,  they  might  wait  with  confidence  upon 
the  outcome  of  any  European  war,  however 
widespread  it  might  be,  and  whatever  might  be 
its  immediate  results.  Control  of  the  sea,  tuk^t 
the  new  conditions  created  by  the  naval  ambi- 
tions of  Germany,  had  involved  a  stupendous 
effort  for  its  maintenance.  It  had  been  main- 
tained, but  at  the  cost  of  obsciu-ing  another 
principle,  more  imniediate  in  its  application, 
though  more  limited  in  its  effects,  yet  equally 
sound  if  the  experience  of  the  Napoleonic  wars 
was  to  be  regarded  as  valid.  This  principle  was 
that  Great  Britain,  though  she  could  secure  her- 
self from  invasion  and  covild  protect  her  com- 
merce by  means  of  her  Fleet,  covild  exercise  no 
real  influence  upon  the  result  of  a  European 
war  unless  she  was  prepared  to  take  her  place  on 
equal  terms  with  the  combatant  nations.  The . 
corollary  was  eqiially  clear,  but  had  equally 
been  obscured.  It  was  that  when  the  Con- 
tinental nations  were  imposing  on  all  their  men 
capable  of  military  service  the  duty  of  bearing 
arms.  Great  Britain,  if  she  wanted  to  inter- 
vene on  equal  terms  with  them  in  war  on  the 
Continent,  mvist  follow  their  exaanple,  so  far  at 
least  as  was  necessary  to  secure  as  many 
recruits  for  her  Army  as  her  military  advisers 
thought  necessary.  Needless  to  sa.y,  nothing 
of  the  kind  had  been  done.  Famous  generals 
who  had  fought  and  won  British  battles  in  all 
quarters  of  the  globe  warned  the  British  people 
again  and  again  that  some  form  of  compulsory 
military  service  should  be  part  of  the  duties  of 
citizenship.  These  warnings  fell  on  deaf  ears, 
so  far  as  they  were  addressed  to  the  people  of 
the  British  Isles. 

In  some  of  the  Dominions,  however,  there 
had  been,  for  some  years  before  the  war,  a 
cleeirer  realization  of  the  essentials  of  miUtary- 
defence.  Australia,  New  Zealand,  South  Africa 
had  all  begun  the  organization  of  citizen  armies. 
These  armies  were  all  based  on  the  same 
principle.  The  State  required  all  male  citizens 
as  they  grew  to  manhood  to  be  registered  for 
military  service.  Service  was  not  in  practice 
exacted  from  all  thus  registered.  In  South 
Africa,  for  instance,  registration  was  merely 
the  means  by  which  the  State  enabled  itself 
to  ascertain  the  ntimbers  which  were  available 
in  the  last  resort.  From  those  thus  registered 
volunteers  for  military  training  covild  be  called 
for.  If  the  number  of  volunteers  proved  in- 
sufficient the  State  held  the  ballot  n  reserve. 
But  the  number  of  volvmteers  was  not  in- 
sufficient. On  the  contrary,  in  the  first  year 
the  number  of  those  who  volunteered  for  tr£uning 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


151 


AUSTRALIAN    COMMONWEALTH    HORSE. 


[Topical. 


greatly  exceeded  the  estimate  made  by 
the  authorities  of  the  number  likely  to  be 
available.  In  Australia,  though  every  male 
between  certain  years  was  liable  for  service, 
the  niimber  of  exemptions  was  in  practice 
large.  This  was  chiefly  due  to  the  difficulty 
of  training  men  in  sparsely  populated  areas. 
In  New  Zealand,  where  the  country  was  more 
closely  settled,  the  proportion  of  exemptions 
was  considerably  less  than  in  Atistralia. 

The  details  of  the  different  systems  will  be 
described  later.  For  the  moment  the  important 
thing  is  to  insist  on  the  fact  that  in  three  of 
the  Dominions  the  principle  of  compulsory 
military  service  had  been  adopted  by  Parliament 
and  put  into  practice  before  the  European 
war  began.  In  Great  Britain  the  popular 
theory  had  been  that  compulsory  service 
was  a  form  of  slavery  unworthy  of  free  Britons, 
a  tyranny  imposed  on  the  tmfortunate  peoples  of 
the  Continent  by  the  ambition  of  monarchs  or 
by  the  fears  of  republican  governments  tremb- 
ling at  the  thought  of  the  consequences  that 
such  ambitions  might  entail  for  them.  In 
Australia,  in  New  Zealand,  in  South  Africa, 
the  same  ideas  prevailed  for  many  years. 
They  were  dissipated  by  experience.  It  became 
clear,  as  soon  as  compulsory  military  training 
was  given  a  trial,  that  a  free  and  self-govern- 
ing people  might  deliberately  recognize  the 
obligation  of  each  citizen  to  equip  himself  for 
the  defence  of  his  country,  might  call  upon  each 
to  fulfil  that  obligation,  and  in  doing  so  might 
confer  substantial  benefits  upon  itself. 

In  each  case,  however,  a  strong  stimulus 
was  required  before  the  experiment  could  be 
tried.  In  each  case,  when  once  it  was  re- 
cognized that  the  effort  involved  in  the  adoption 
of  military  training  had  to  be  made,  political 
differences  were  suspended  and  men  of  all 
parties  cooperated  in  the  determination  to  make 


the  experiment  a  success.  In  ea,ch  case  the 
success  of  the  experiment  led  to  an  unex- 
pected revelation  of  social  benefits  in  the 
new  system,  suggested  indeed  by  writers  and 
thinkers  in  Germany,  but  up  to  that  time 
altogether  unrealized  by  English  observers. 
The  motives  for  the  adoption  of  compulsory 
service  in  the  three  Dominions  were  Very  similar, 
and  quite  foreign  to  the  traditional  beliefs 
of  the  British  peoples.  Australia  and  New 
Zealand  suddenly  realized  that  they  were 
isolated  outposts  of  Europe,  set  in  an  ocean 
ringed  by  Asiatic  peoples  who  had  begun  to 
show  unmistakable  signs  of  waking  to  the  reali- 
ties of  world  power.  The  leading  men  in  both 
coTintries  were  no'longer  content  to  trust  entirely 


HON.    SAMUEL    HUGHES, 
Canadian  Minister  of  Defence. 


iTopicat* 


152 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


NEW    ZEALAND    MOUNTED    RIFLES. 


[Topical, 


to  the  protection  of  the  British  Fleet.  The  fear 
of  Asiatic  in^^asion,  or  perhaps  rather  of  Asiatic 
migration  from  overcrowded  cotintries  into 
their  empty  lands,  took  hold  upon  them.  Once 
convinced  that  there  was  real  danger  of  this, 
they  set  themselves  to  provide  for  their  own 
defence  by  land  and  sea.  When  war  broke 
out  in  Europe  their  plans  were  still  incomplete, 
but  enough  had  been  done  to  prove  that  the 
scheme  to  which  they  were  conunitted  was  weU 
conceived  and  offered  them  at  least  a  prospect 
of  being  able  to  give  some  account  of  them- 


selves if  they  were  ever  challenged.  In  South 
Africa  the  motive  power  of  the  Defence  Act 
was  the  clear  necessity  of  providing  for  the 
security  of  a  cotintry  in  which  the  native 
population  outnumbered  the  European  by 
five  to  one.  Not  that  there  was  any  suggestion 
of  turbvilence  or  sedition  among  the  natives. 
But  self-respect  made  self-defence  a  primary 
duty,  and  it  speedily  became  evident  to  public 
men  of  all  schools  of  thought  that  the  Union 
of  South  Africa  could  not  rely  longer  on  the 
protection  of  Imperial  troops. 


CANADA. 


Canada,  when  Great  Britain  went  to  war, 
was  less  completely  org«uiized  than  AustraUa, 
South  Africa,  and  New  Zealand,  although  her 
potential  strength  was  xar  greater.  The  reason 
for  this  condition  of  affairs  was  obvious.  She 
had  only  two  possible  enemies  who  might 
invade  her  territory,  and  the  possibility  of 
invasion  by  either  of  these  was  very  remote. 
Japan  was  the  ally  of  great  Britain,  and  neither 
from  her  nor  from  the  United  States  was  an 
attack  within  the  range  of  practical  poUtics. 


It  was  nOv.  surprising,  therefore,  that  her  army 
was  in  an  embryonic  condition,  and  that  time 
would  be  required  for  the  purposes  of  expan- 
sion and  training.  Nevertheless,  the  enibryo 
was  very  much  aUve,  and  everything  was  to 
be  expected  from  the  resolute  patriotism 
of  her  hardy  sons.  Like  other  parts  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  race  her  people  were  not 
miUtary  but  warlike ;  and  her  miUtary 
institutions,  though  small  in  themselves, 
were   supplemented  by  the   bold,  active,   and 


THE  GOVERNOR-GENERAL'S  BODYGUARD  (CANADA). 


Toptct:^ 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


153 


self-confident  spirit  of  the  mass  of  the 
population. 

The  strength  of  the  Canadian  Permanent 
Militia — Staff,  Cavalry,  Artillery,  Engineers, 
and  Technical  Service  Corps  all  included — 
was  about  270  officers  and  2,700  other  ranks. 
These  forces  trained  throughout  the  year  and 
completed  every  year  the  course  of  musketry 
laid  down  for  the  Regular  Army  in  the  British 
Isles.  The  "  Active  Militia  "  had  a  nominal 
strength  of  about  3,850  officers  and  44,500 
other  ranks.  But  in  practice  the  regiments 
and  corps  of  this  force  were  considerably 
below  their  theoretical  strength.  Even  so, 
much  had  been  done  to  improve  the  Army  in 
the  years  inunediately  preceding  the  war. 
The  Officers'  Training  College  at  Kingston  was 
an  admirably  efficient  institution,  and  there  had 
been  a  marked  improvement  in  the  attendance 
of  the  Active  Militia  at  training,  drills,  and 
camps.  The  conditions  of  service  demanded 
from  the  Cavalry,  Artillery,  and  Army  Service 
Corps  16  days'  training  a  year.  From  other 
arms  and  departments  12  days  annually  were 
required. 

Besides  the  Active  Militia,  there  were  three 
other  semi -military  organizations  in  Canada. 
The  Royal  North -West  Moim.ted  Police  were 
organized  in  12  divisions,  under  the  Dominion 
Government,  with  headquarters  at  Regina. 
They  consisted  in  all  of  about  650  men  and  were 
trained  as  cavalry.  Rifle  associations,  about 
430  in  all,  with  something  like  24,000  members 
ready  in  an  emergency  to  serve  in  the  Militia, 


SIR    ROBERT    BORDEN, 
Prime  Minister  of  Canada. 


were  spread  throughout  the  Dominion.  Finally, 
there  were  about  270  cadet  corps  with  a  total 
of  about  20,000  cadets,  divided  into  senior 
cadets  (14  to  18  years  old)  and  jtmior  cadets 
(12  to  14  years).  There  were,  therefore,  a 
considerable  number  of  men  and  boys 
who  were  more  or  less  familiar  with  the  idea 
of  discipline  and  with  the  business  of  the 
soldier. 


AUSTRALIA     AND     NEW     ZEALAND. 


If  there  was  superficial  irony,  there  was  also 
deep  significance  in  the  fact  that  Australia 
and  New  Zealand — pioneers  among  the  British 
peoples  in  every  democratic  experiment — 
should  also  have  been  the  first  to  establish 
a  system  of  compulsory  citizen  service.  Ob- 
servers of  the  progress  of  democratic  institu. 
tions  had  already  noted  this  as  another  proof 
that  the  most  complete  self-government  exacts 
ultimately  a  more  rigid  self-discipline  than 
any  other  form,  of  organized  freedom.  The 
people  of  Germany  had  been  drilled  to  military 
5ervice  by  the  iron  determination  of  the  ruling 
class,  backed  by  the  teaching  of  professors 
who  had  developed  the  doctrine  of  national 
efficiency  to  its  last  word  in  a  severely  logical 
progress  on  The  French  had  been  compelled 
by  a  sure  insight  into  the  essentials  of  national 
existence  to  follow  the  example  of  Germany. 


This  Franco-German  rivalry  had  imposed  on 
the  whole  of  Europe  a  corresponding  sub- 
mission to  the  dictrnn  that  the  life  of  a  people 
depends  on  its  military  efficiency.  Only  Great 
Britain,  secure  in  her  command  of  the  narrow 
seas,  absorbed  in  the  problem  of  reheving  for 
the  poorer  classes  the  stress  of  economic  com- 
petition, had  refused  to  admit  the  validity  of 
this  dictvim.  So  far  from  following  her  example, 
Australia  and  New  Zealand  had  begvin  to  train 
their  yovmg  men  to  arms,  and  had  eirrived,  though 
by  a  qmte  different  road,  at  the  same  conclu- 
sion as  the  German  professors — that  national 
military  service  was  a  discipline  beneficial  tc 
the  race.  After  barely  two  years'  experience 
of  the  national  training  system,  this  was  the 
conclusion  at  which  AustraUa  and  New 
Zealand  had  come.  The  remaining  opponents 
of  the  system  were  few    and  were  no    longer 


154 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAJt^ 


listened  to.  This  was  shown  in  an  article 
contributed  to  the  Empire  Number  of  The 
Times  (published  on  May  25,  1914)  by  one 
who  had  had  special  opportunities  of  studying 
the  effects  of  national  military  training  in 
Australia  and  New  Zealand.  His  conclusion 
was  that  "  the  ordinary  citizen  of  Australia 
and  New  Zealand  .  .  .  regards  it  as  so 
self-evident  as  not  to  be  worth  discussing  that 
the  only  possible  way  to  secure  either  the 
numbers  or  the  efficiency  required  for  national 
defence  11^,  in  the  enforcement  of  the  duty 
of  mihtary  training  upon  the  whole  body  of 
citizens.  .  .  .  The  moral  value  of  disci- 
pline has  come  to  him  as  a  new  revelation,  too 
fresh  and  too  vivid  to  be  accepted  as  merely 
in  the  ordinary  coiorse  of  things." 

The  same  authority  may  be  quoted  upon 
the  details  of  the  Australasian  system.  Its 
chief  characteristics,  in  his  opinion,  were 
"  the  early  age  at  which  it  begins,  the  number 
of  years  for  which  it  is  enforced,  and  the  limited 
time  devoted  to  continuous  training  in  any  one 
year."  Australia  and  New  Zealand  began 
to  train  their  boys  at  the  age  of  12.  The 
training  continued  till  they  reached  25 — 
a  period  of  13  years.  But  in  each  year  not 
more  than  16  days  of  service,  or  their 
equivalent  in  half-days  or  shorter  periods  of 
drill,  were  required.  From  the  age 
of  12  to  14  the  boys  were  trained  as  jiinior 
cadets,  receiving  90  hours'  instruction  in 
physical  exercises  and  elementary  drill  a  year 
under  the  education  authorities.  At  14  they 
became  senior  cadets,  passed  under  military 
control,  and,  till  they  were  18,  had  to  do  four 


THE    HON.    T.    ALLEN. 
New  Zealand  Minister  of  Defence. 

whole-day  drUls,  12  half -day  drills,  and  14  night 
drills  per  year.  At  18  they  entered  the  Citizen 
Force,  and  for  seven  years  were  required  to  do 
16  days'  training  (made  up  in  part  of  half- 
day  or  night  drills),  with  not  less  than  eight 
days  spent  continuously  in  camp  in  each  year. 
For  this  they  were  paid  3s.  a  day  and  upwards. 
At  25  their  period  of  training  closed.  Those 
who  chose  to  enter  the  technical  branches 
of  the  service  at  18 — naval  service,  artillery, 
engineers,  and  other  special  corps — had  to  do 
25  days'  service  a  year.     Of  this,   17  days  in 


GROUP    OF    ALL    UNITS,    CAPE    COLONY. 


ITopieal 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


155 


each  year  had  to  be  continuous  training  on 
board  ship  or  in  camp.  "  The  total  length  of 
service,"  to  quote  again  the  same  authority, 
"  is  thus  some  6  J  months  in  the  infantry  and 
mounted  corps  and  %^  months  in  the  technical 
corps.  This  is  considerably  longer  in  the 
aggregate  than  that  demanded  by  the  Swiss 
system,  which  only  asks  152  days  of  the 
infantry  and  artillery  and  180  of  the  cavalry. 
But  the  Swiss  training  does  not  begin  till  the 
age  of  20  arid  opens  with  a  continuous  recruit 
training  of  65  days  for  infantry  and  90  days  for 
cavalry,  followed  by  repetition  courses  of 
11  days  every  second  year  for  14  years." 
"  From  the  military  point  of  view,"  he  adds, 
"  it  would  undoubtedly  be  an  improvement  i^ 
at  least  one  longer  period  of  continuous  train- 
ing could  be  given.  This  would  in  all  pro- 
bability also  be  supported  for  reasons  of  con- 
venience by  the  community  as  a  whole." 

Two  other  essential  elements  in  the  Austra- 
lasian system  of  national  military  training, 
as  it  existed  at  the  outbreak  of  war  in  Eiirope, 
must  also  be  described  briefly 

First,  the  forces  of  Australia  were  organized 
on  what  is  technically  known  as  the  "  Area  " 
plan.  This  had  been  recommended  by  Lord 
Kitchener  in  a  report  to  the  Australian  Govern- 
ment which  had  formed  the  basis  of  the  neces- 
sary legislation.  Australia  was  subdivided 
into  some  200  training  areas,  each  under  the 
supervision  of  an  "  area  officer."  The  numbers 
of  men  under  training  in  each  area  varied 
with  the  density  of  the  population.  Again, 
every  ten  areas  were  grouped  under  a  superior 
officer,  responsible  in  peace  time  for  the  co- 
ordination of  the  work  of  training,  and  designated 
in  war  time  as  brigade  major  for  the  forces  of 
the  ten  areas.  In  New  Zealand  the  "  area 
system  "  was  also  the  main  principle  of  the 
organization,  but  the  grouping  differed  in 
minor  details. 

Second,  great  attention  had  been  paid  to 
the  training  of  officers.  The  aim  of  the 
organizers  of  the  system  had  been  the  combina- 
tion of  a  democratic  principle  of  selection  and 
promotion  with  the  most  rigid  tests  of  efficiency. 
A  training  college  for  officers  had  been  esta- 
blished at  Dimtroon,  close  to  Canberra,  the  site 
of  the  Federal  capital  which  was  under  con- 
struction. To  this  ten  cadets  from  New 
Zealand  were  admitted  each  year  in  addition 
to  about  33  from  Australia.  The  age  of  entry 
was  from  16  to  18.  The  total  number  of  cadets 
in  the  college  was  about  160.  No  charge  was 
made  for  their  training.  On  the  contrary,  they 
received  £30  on  joining  and  an  allowance  of 


THE   HON.    E.    D.    MILLEN. 
Australian  Minister  of  Defence. 

6s.  6d.  per  day.  In  return,  the  authorities 
were  able  to  exact  a  high  standard  of  efficiency 
and  to  require  from  each  cadet  entering  the 
college  an  undertaking — given  by  the  parent  or 
guardian — of  service  in  the  Permanent  Military 
Forces  for  at  least  12  years  from  the  date  of 
joining  the  college.  The  course  of  instruction 
was  exacting.  Special  attention  was  paid  to 
the  training  of  character.  The  cadet,  on  com- 
pletion of  his  training,  was  guaranteed  a  com- 
mission and  pay  at  £250  a  year,  and  was  required 
to  spend  his  first  year  of  service  in  Great  Britain 
as  a  member  of  some  unit  of  the  Imperial 
Army. 

The  Australasian  systems  had  not  reached 
their  full  maturity  at  the  beginning  of  the 
European  War,  but  it  was  estimated  that  when 
their  full  effects  were  operative  they  would 
provide  a  total  of  about  150,000  men,  with  from 
four  to  11  years'  of  full  training  behind  them. 
The  object  of  these  citizen  forces  was  the 
defence  of  their  own  coiontries,  and  they  formed 
no  part  of ,  any  systematic  organization  for 
Imperial  Defence,  though  probably  the  Imperial 
Defence  Committee  had  taken  them  into 
account  when  considering  the  military  strength 
which  the  Empire  could  command  at  a  moment 
of  crisis.  Whether  this  was  so  or  not,  the 
crisis,  when  it  came,  found  the  Australasian 
people  ready  and  eager  to  send  men  to  the  help 
of  the  Mother  Country. 


156 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


SOUTH    AFRICA. 


In  South  Africa,  just  as  much  as  in  Australia 
and  New  Zealand,  the  defence  organization  had 
been  expressly  designed  to  meet  special  local 
needs,  without  much  thought  of  Imperial  re- 
quirements as  a  whole.  This  was  natural. 
When  war  broke  out  the  South  African  defence 
scheme  had  been  in  existence  as  a  working 
organization  barely  two  years.  Its  full  effects 
were  still  to  be  seen.  But  it  had  progressed  so 
far  that  the  Govermnent  of  the  Dominion 
were  able  to  set  free  the  Imperial  troops — ^to  the 
number  of  about  6,000 — which  were  still  in  the 
country,  undertaking  themselves  the  whole 
duty  of  local  defence. 

This  was  no  small  achievement,  for  the  work 
of  organizing  National  Defence  in  South  Africa 
had  been  peculiarly  difificult  and  delicate.  It 
had  been  necessary  to  make  provision  for  equal 
conditions  of  service  for  English  and  Dutch, 
to  elaborate  the  composition  of  a  force  in  which 
they  shoiild  serve  side  by  side,  and  to  provide 
with  the  utmost  care  against  anything  that 
might  cause  friction  between  them.  The 
Defence  Act  was  passed  by  the  South  Africaji 
Parliament  during  the  Session  of  1912.  Ten 
years  before  Boer  and  Britain  had  been  at  war 
throughout  the  country.  Those  ten  years  had 
seen  the  re-settlement  and  re-stocking  of  a 
devastated  country.  It  had  seen  the  triumph 
of  British  methods  of  dealing  with  a  people 
whose  land  had  been  conquered,  whose  homes 
had  been  burnt,  whose  people  had  been  com- 
pelled to  accept  the  will  of  Great  "Britain.  The 
work  that  had  been  done  in  those  ten  years 


THE    RIGHT    HONOURABLE     SIR 

EDWARD    MORRIS. 

Premier  of  Newfoundland. 

[J.  Russell  &■  Sons. 

laust  stand  as  an  imperishable  moniiment  to  the 
genius  of  Great  Britain  for  winning  the  respect, 
the  loyalty,  and  even  the  affection  of  peoples 
whose  territory  has  passed  into  her  possession. 
The  Transvaal  and  the  Orange  Free  State  had 
been  part  of  the  Dominions  of  Great  Britain  only 
for  ten  years.  In  that  time  their  people  had 
become  loyal  citizens  of  Greater  Britain.  The 
Government  of  the  Dominion  was  actually  in 
the  hands  of  Dutch-speaking  South  Africans. 


^^^^HBH^^.                                    I^^«  ^^^.  *''^^^a[^piP»wi'"-^^^^^^^  ■  *iiU^^^ 

m        ^^*-*.^  c-7^^-,     , 

*   JL -^       )i 

■■■P^'                      jM 

^^^^^^-'    gp-       • 

THE    NEWFOUNDLAND    NAVAL    RESERVES 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


157 


The  author  of  the  Defence  Act  was  General 
Smuts,  who  had  fought  against  Great  Britain 
ten  years  before.  The  Commandant-General 
of  the  Citizen  Force  was  General  Beyers, 
another  Boer  general  of  conspicuous  ability. 
And  in  the  ranks  of  the  force  English  and  Dutch 
served  side  by  side — all  thought  of  race  dis- 
tinction obliterated — all  equally  ready  to  do 
their  utmost  for  the  Empire  in  the  crisis  that 
had  come  upon  it  so  suddenly. 

But  the  task  of  combining  Dutch  and  English 
in  one  homogeneous  force  had  not  been  the  only 
difficulty  which  those  who  had  designed  the 
scheme  of  National  Defence  for  South  Africa 
had  had  to  meet.  The  European  population 
of  the  Dominion  was  small,  the  native  popula- 
tion large.  The  natviral  increase  of  the  natives 
was  greater  than\that  of  the  Europeans.  The 
distribution  of  the  European  population  was 
also  a  difficulty.  A  few  large  cities — Cape 
Town,  Johannesburg,  Pretoria,  Durban,  Bloem- 
fontein — absorbed  a  very  large  proportion  of 
the  white  people  of  the  coiintry.  The  rest 
lived  on  scattered  farms,  at  considerable  dis- 
tances from  each  other,  separated  in  such  a  way 
that  it  was  difficult  to  provide  for  their  training 
except  by  means  of  an  excessive  number  of 
small  units.  Yet  these  difficulties  were 
balanced  by  some  advantages.  South  Africa 
had  known  many  wars.  Its  early  days  had 
seen  constant  conflicts  of  white  men  against  the 
natives.  These  had  happily  passed  away  and 
left  a  native  population  contented  on  the  whole 
with  its  conditions  of  life  and  extraordinarily 
loyal  and  devoted  to  the  British  Sovereign. 
Later  warfc  between  English  and  Dutch  had  left  a 
white  popiilation  trained  to  arms  by  the  stern 
discipline  of  actual  warfare  and  equipped  with 
a  knowledge  of  the  meaning  of  modern  war 
far  in  advance  of  that  of  any  other  part  of  the 
Empire. 

The  organization  of  the  South  African  Defence 
Force  had  naturally  been  adapted  to  these  con- 
ditions. It  was  the  work  of  practical  men  who 
knew  the  nature  of  the  material  available. 
The  force  which  was  required  was  one  that 
would  safeguard  the  position  of  the  white 
population.  Its  organization  was  not  directed 
in  any  sense  against  the  native  peoples,  who 
were  perfectly  peaceable  and  loyal.  But  it  had. 
in  view  the  possibility— however  remote — 
of  a  change  in  the  attitude  of  the  natives. 
If  such  a  change  should  come,  if  the  native 
tribes  should  grow  discontented,  if  some 
revolutionary  leader  should  arise  and  win 
them  over  to  discontent  and  hostility,  then:  it 
might  be  necessary  in  the  future,  as  it  had  been 
fxx  the  past,  for  the  Europeans  to  defend  them< 


GENERAL    THE    HON.    J.    C.    SMUTS, 
Minister  oi  Defence  Union  of  South  Airica. 

selves,  their  institutions,  and  their  civiliza. 
tions,  against  an  organized  attack  by  natives 
who,  for  all  their  amazing  progress,  were  still 
in  the  mass  barbarians.  Little,  naturally, 
had  been  said  about  this  while  the  Defence  Act 
was  before  Parliament.  There  had  been  no 
necessity  to  talk  about  it.  Such  a  threat  to 
Eviropean  civilization  in  South  Africa  was  a 
remote  contingency.  But  it  was  still  a  con- 
tingency, and  provision  had  had  to  be  made 
against  it. 

There  were  two  other  reasons  why  South 
Africa  should  have  created  a  Citizen  Army  for 
her  own  defence  by  land.  First,  her  frontier 
on  the  north-west  marched  with  that  of  Grerman 
South-West  Africa.  In  a  European  war,  if  the 
British  Navy  should  prove  unable  to  guard  all 
the  oceans  of  the  world,  it  might  have  been 
possible  for  Germany  to  pour  troops  into 
German  South-West  Africa  and  to  in'^ade  the 
Union  of  South  Africa  by  that  route.  This,  too, 
was  a  -remote  contingency,  but  provision  had 
to  be  made  against  it.  Secondly,  troops  were 
needed  in  South  Africa — as  in  othsr  countries — 
to  safeguard  law  and  order  in  the  last  resort 
against  internal  disruption.  The  industrial  con- 
ditions, especially  in  the  Transvaal,  where  the 
gold-mining  industry  had  collected  a  large 
number  of  artisans  and  labourers  in  a  relatively 
small  area,  made  the  country  specially  liable 


158 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


to  sudden  outbreaks  of  social  unrest.  And 
the  railways,  which  were  essential  to  the  life 
of  the  people,  because  food  had  to  be  imported 
and  transported  to  the  inland  districts,  were 
State-owned  railways  worked  by  labourers  and 
artisans,  who  were  naturally  subject  to  periods 
of  acute  discontent.  Less  than  a  year  after 
the  Defence  Organization  had  been  set  on 
foot  these  industrial  conditions  caused  a  great 
upheaval.  It  was  suppressed  by  the  help 
of  Imperial  troops.  Six  months  later  it  broke 
out  again.  Tliis  time  the  Defence  Force  was 
an  instrument  ready  to  the  hands  of  the  Govern- 
ment. It  was  at  once  called  into  being.  Its 
members  responded  with  marked  alacrity  and 
the  disorders  were  suppressed  without  blood- 
shed. To  have  been  able  to  use  with  such 
efficiency  an  organization  so  recently  begun, 
to  have  dispensed,  in  this  second  trial, 
with  Imperial  troops,  the  Government  must 
have  had  full  confidence  in  the  work  which  the 
Defence  Act  had  given  them  the  power  to  do. 
Their   confidence  was   not  misplaced. 

What  South  Africa  required,  then,  was  a  mobile 
and  efficient  force,  ready  for  mobilization  at 
any  moment,  not  very  large  in  numbers  at 
first,  but  with  ample  reserves  available  if  they 
were  required.  The  Defence  Act  of  1912  aimed 
at  the  pro\Tsion  of  such  a  force.  A  small 
body  tf  permanent  mounted  men  was  main- 
tained, ready  for  service  at  any  moment  and 
in  any  part  of  the  Union.  These  mounted 
troop  were  available  for  police  duty  in  the 
outlying  districts  during  peace  time.  If  war 
broke  out,  reserves  were  available  to  do  pclice 
duty  while  they  were  on  active  service.  Next 
came  the  organization  known  as  the  Active 
Citizen  Force.  This  was  obtained  by  a  sj^stem 
of  registration  and  volunteering,  w  ith  the  ballot 
in  reserve.  The  "  area  system,"  as  in  Australia 
and  New  Zealand,  was  the  basis  of  this  organiza- 
tion. In  each  area  all  naales  between  the  ages 
of  16  and  25  were  compelled  to  register  them- 
selves. A  certain  number  of  volunteers  were 
called  for  from  among  those  registered.  If 
in  any  area  the  number  of  volunteers  was 
insufficient,  the  Government  liad  the  right 
to  ballot  for  the  men  it  required.  In  practice 
this  power  proved  unnecessary.  The  number 
of  volunteers  for  service  in  the  two  years 
during  which  the  system  had  been  working 
before  war  came  upon  Europe  had  largely 
exceeded  the  number  estimated  as  likely  to  be 
available  when  the  details  of  the  system  were 
being    worked    out. 

The  training  of  these  volunteers  was  similar  to 
that  adopted  in  Australasia.  But  although 
founded  upon  the  cadet  system,  it  did  not  give 


such  definite  recognition  to  that  system  as  the 
Australasian  organizations  did.  The  cotirse 
of  training  prescribed  by  the  South  African 
Defence  Act  of  1912  was  to  extend  over  four 
years.  In  the  first  year  the  days  of  train- 
ing required  were  not  to  exceed  thirty ;  in 
the  other  three  years  they  were  to  be  limited 
to  twenty-one.  In  the  first  year  there  were 
to  be  not  more  than  twenty-two  days  of  con- 
tinuous training ;  and  in  each  of  the  other 
years  not  more  than  fifteen  days  of  continuous 
training.  Days  of  non-continuous  training 
were  carefully  defined.  Each  day  was  to  be 
made  up  of  either  "  a  period  of  instruction 
or  exercise  lasting  eight  hours  "  ;  or  of  "  two 
periods  of  instruction  or  exercise  each  lasting 
four  hours  "  ;  or  of  "  six  periods  of  instruction 
or  exercise  each  lasting  one  hour  and  a  half." 

Such  was  the  organization  of  the  Active 
Citizen  Force.  It  was,  of  course,  supplemented 
by  provisions  for  training  officers  (South  Africa 
had  naturally  a  large  number  of  men  equipped 
by  actual  war  experience  for  command) ;  for 
coast  and  garrison  defence  and  for  artillery 
training.  But  it  was  also  backed  by  an  elaborate 
organization  of  trained  and  partially-trained 
reserves.  Men  who  had  completed  their  four 
years'  training  (there  were  no  such  men  when 
war  broke  out,  as  the  Act  was  only  passed  in 
1912)  were  to  be  drafted  into  Class  A  of  the 
Reserves,  where  they  would  remain  till  they 
were  over  forty-five.  Men  registered  who  had 
not  volunteered  for  service  or  who,  having 
volimteered,  were  not  accepted,  were  trained 
to  shoot  in  Rifle  Associations.  These  formed 
Class  B  of  the  Reserve.  Thus  every  male 
between  sixteen  and  twenty-five  passed  through 
the  hands  of  the  Government  either  as  a  member 
of  the  Active  Citizen  Force  or  in  one  of  the 
Rifle  Associations.  Males  under  twenty-one 
who  were  registered  but  did  not  volunteer  for 
service  had  to  pay  £1  per  annum  to  the  Govern- 
ment and  were  still  liable  to  be  called  on  to 
serve  by  ballot  if  the  number  of  volunteers 
was  insufficient.  Men  in  Classes  A  and  B 
of  the  Reserve,  when  they  reached  forty- 
five,  were  to  pass  into  what  was  known  as 
the  National  Reserve  untU  the  age  of  sixty. 

The  whole  force  thus  organized  was  under 
the  control  of  a  Council  of  Defence,  appointed 
in  practice  by  the  Ministry  in  power.  This 
Council  exercised  advisory  functions  without 
executive  power.  It  acted  as  a  body  assisting 
the  Minister  of  Defence  and  was  composed  of 
men  who  were  experts  in  military  matters, 
irrespective  of  their  political  opinions.  In 
South  Africa,  as  in  Australia  and  New  Zealand, 
the  defence  organization  was  the_work  of  all 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


159 


political  parties.  The  usual  conditions  of 
Parliamentary  life  were  suspended  while  it 
was  under  discussion.  All  cooperated  in 
devising  the  best  possible  system,  considering 
the  needs  of  the  country,  and  the  advice  of 
men  like  Field-Marshal  Lord  Methuen,  who 
was  then  Commander-in-Chief  ot  the  Imperial 
Forces  in  the  Dominion,  was  asked  and  freely 
given.  The  result  was  that  the  system  estab- 
lished under  the  Defence  Act  of  1912  had  the 
full  support  of  the  whole  country  and  had 
given  every  promise  of  providing  the  Dominion 
with  an  efficient  and  adequate  force  for  its 
land  defence  at  the  moment  when  Great  Britain 
was  plunged  into  war. 

Such  were  the  organizations  of  the  Dominions 
for  their  internal  defence.  If  there  had  been 
no  organized  system  before  the  European 
War  of  raising  and  training  troops  for  the 
defence  of  the  Empire,  it  was  speedily  clear 
that  when  the  crisis  came  Great  Britain  could 
rely  upon  them  for  their  utmost  efforts  in  the 
common  cause.  The  South  African  War,  fifteen 
years  earlier,  had  gone  a  long  way  to  prove 
this.  But  there  had  then  been  nothing  hke 
the  spontaneous  rally  of  all  parts  of  the  Empire 
to  the  help  of  Great  Britain  that  marked  the 
declaration  of  war  against  Germany.  The 
people  of  the  Dominions  seemed  to  realize, 
with  an  instinctive  insight  which  was  the  best 
testimony  to  their  patriotism,  the  full  extent 
of  the  issues  involved.  Offers  of  help  in  men, 
money,  and  supplies  came  pouring  in.  Canada 
immediately  offered  20,000  men  and  let  it 
be  known  that  if  more  were  required  they 
would  be  forthcoming.  Within  a  month 
another  10,000  had  been  added  to  this  number, 
and  the  pressure  of  men  clamouring  to  go  to 
the  assistance  of  the  Old  Country  swelled  the 
recruiting  lists  of  the  Government  of  the 
Dominion.  AustraUa  also  offered  20,000  men. 
In  her  case,  too,  this  number  was  speedily 
augmented  by  the  addition  of  an  Infantry  and 
a  Light  Horse  Brigade.  New  Zealand's  first 
offer  was  8,000  men,  and  she,  too,  made  it 
known  that  more  would  be  sent  if  they  were 
needed.  South  Africa  released  at  once  the  Im- 
perial troops  within  her  borders,  thus  showing 
the  value  of  the  Home  Defence  Force  that 
she  was  creating.  Besides  these  6,000  Imperial 
troops — a  true  contribution  to  the  common 
cause — there  were  offers  from  all  parts  of  the 
Union  for  service  in  additional  special  contin- 
gents. Austraha,  Canada,  and  New  Zealand  at 
once  tindertook  the  whole  cost  of  equipment 
and  maintenance  of  their  contingents. 

To     these     offers    were    added    numberless 
Other  acts,  equally  valuable  and  equally  welcome 
'> 


as  showing  the  intense  devotion  of  the 
oversea  peoples.  The  Royal  Australian  Navy 
was  placed  under  the  control  of  the  Admiralty, 
while  New  Zealand  and  Canada  also  made  free 
gifts  of  all  their  available  resources  in  ships  and 
men.  The  New  Zealand,  the  magnificent 
battle-cruiser  which  had  been  presented  without 
condition  of  any  kind  to  the  British  Fleet, 
was  already  on  service  in  Home  waters.  Canada 
put  her  two  cruisers,  the  Niobe  and  the  Rain- 
bow, fully  equipped  for  service,  under  Admiralty 
orders  for  purposes  oi  commerce  protection. 
Her  Government  also  purchased  two  sub- 
marines to  be  used  in  the  same  way  and  for  the 
same  purpose  on  her  Pacific  coasts. 

Thus  the  doubts  that  had  been  entertained 
by  many  observers  of  the  development  of  the 
armies  and  naval  forces  of  the  Dominions 
vanished  at  the  first  threat  to  the  integrity  of 
the  Empire.  Without  a  moment's  hesitation, 
with  a  magnificent  imanimity  that  will  live  in 
the    records    of    British    honovir,    each    of    the 


TYPE     OF    CANADIAN     SOLDIER,     LORD 
STRATHGONA'S  CORPS.       {Topicai 


160 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


Dominions  threw  its  immediately  available 
strength  in1o  the  scale.  The  new  worlds  re- 
dressed, in  a  new  sense,  the  balance  of  the  old. 
They  *'  let  everything  go  in,"  and  set  themselves 
at  once  to  continue  their  efforts  until  success 
should  be  assured.  Their  public  men  expressed 
this  far-sighted  determination  in  words  of  reso- 
lute enthusiasm.  Differences  of  race,  minor  con- 
tentions of  party,  doubts,  hesitations,  com- 
plaints about  the  inertia  and  slackness  of  the 
people  of  the  British  Isles — all  disappeared 
in  a  night.  The  first  morrow  of  war  found 
the  whole  Empire,  in  the  inspiring  words 
used  by  the  King  in  his  Message  to  the 
Dominions,  "  united,  calm,  resolute,  trusting 
in  God." 

The  resources  of  a  country  engaged  in  a  great 
war  do  not  consist  only  in  the  numbers  of  its 
armed  men  or  the  spirit  of  its  citizens.  The 
women  of  Canada  equipped  a  hospital  ship  for 
the  British  Navy.  Newfoundland,  unable  to 
provide  an  army  out  of  her  small  population, 
did  nobly  in  raising  500  men  for  service  abroad, 
while  she  increased  her  Home  Defence  Force  by 
500  men  and  her  naval  reserve  by  400.  In  many 
of  the  great  cities  of  the  Empire  funds  similar 
to  that  initiated  by  the  Prince  of  Wales  in 
Grisat  Britain  were  started  and  met  with  the 
most  open-handed  support.  In  AustraUa  a 
fund  of  this  kind  was  specifically  de- 
voted to  the  pvirchase  of  food  suppUes  for 
the  British  Isles.  In  Canada,  gifts  of  food  in 
many  kinds  were  immediately  organized.  The 
Dominion  led  the  way  with  1,000,000  bags  of 


flour,  the  first  instalment  of  which  reached 
Great  Britain  less  than  a  month  after  the 
declaration  of  war.  Similar  gifts  in  kind  were 
made  by  the  Provincial  Governments.  In  such 
acts  of  beneficent  generosity  private  citizens 
vied  with  public  bodies,  and  in  both  public  and 
private  generosity  the  other  Dominions  did 
their  best  to  rival  Canada.  A  complete  list  of 
all  such  offers  of  aid  to  the  Mother  Cotintry 
wovdd  be  difficvilt  to  compile.  The  examples 
given  are  sufficient  to  show  the  splendid  spirit 
which  animated  the  Self -Governing  Dominions 
in  the  hour  of  crisis. 

Most  conspicuous  of  all  was  the  absolute 
unanimity  of  all  races  within  the  Empire  in 
support  of  the  Mother  Country.  The  French  of 
Canada,  the  Dutch  of  South  Africa,  were  heart 
and  soul  with  their  fellow-citizens  in  support 
of  the  British  cause.  The  native  races  of 
South  Africa  lost  no  time  in  giving  equally 
striking  proofs  of  their  loyalty.  Amid  all  the 
anxieties  of  the  moment  these  proofs  of  the 
success  of  British  policy  were  welcomed  with  pro- 
f  oiond  gladness  in  Great  Britain.  There  had  been 
many  who,  in  earlier  days,  had  doubted  whether 
the  Empire  would  endure  the  strain  of  a  great 
crisis.  All  such  doubts  were  now  resolved. 
The  people  of  Great  Britain  prepared  themselves 
for  the  long  trial  of  an  unexpected  war  with  all 
the  more  confidence  in  the  final  success  of  their 
arms  since  the  very  first  result  of  that  trial  had 
been  to  prove  the  essential  soundness  of  their 
Imperial  policy  and  the  strength  of  the  fabric 
based  on  that  foviudation. 


CHAPTER  X. 


THE  NATIVE  INDIAN  ARMY. 


Britain's  Position  in  India — Supposed  Source  of  Weakness — Indian  Troops  at  Malta — 
Effect  of  Good  Government  in  India — Employing  Coloured  Troops  against  White  Foes — 
The  Gurkhas — The  Sikhs  have  Ftrst  Place — ^What  is  a  Sikh  ? — The  Punjabi  Musalmans — 
The  Pathans — Baluchis  and  Brahuis — The  Brahmans — ^Rajputs  and  Mahrattas — ^Madrasis 
— The  Dogras — Difficulties  of  Creed  and  Caste — The  Loyal  Native  States'  Contingents — 
No  Native  Field  Artillery — ^Abolition  of  the  "  Colour  Line  "  in  War. 


BY  the  possession  of  India,  Britain 
at  the  outbreak  of  the  great  Euro- 
pean war  occupied  a  unique  position 
among  the  empires.  A  compara- 
tivoly  small  European  country  herself,  relying 
for  self-defence  chiefly  upon  a  powerful  Navy, 
she  was  at  the  same  time  the  ruler  of  vast 
4^sian  territory  with  an  extended  land  frontier. 
It  is  true  that  along  practically  the  whole  of 
this  frontier  the  Himalayas,  with  the  spiu-s 
and  buttresses  of  minor  mo\intain  ranges, 
constituted  a  mighty  barrier  ;  but  it  was  a 
barrier  which  had  many  times  been  pierced 
by  successful  invasion  within  historical  times 
and  the  burden  of  maintaining  it  in  an  efficient 
state  of  defence  had  been  heavy.  Heavy  too 
had  been  the  bvirden  of  maintaining  peace 
within  the  borders  of  India,  where  rival  nations 
with  jarring  creeds  seemed  ever  ready  to  fly  at 
each  other's  throats  and  only  likely  to  iinite 
in  a  common  effort  to  shake  off  our  yoke. 
Thus,  although  we  had  always  set  oiirselves 
the  task  of  governing  India  so  justly  and 
sympathetically  that  her  peoples  might  be  on 
our  side  in  the  day  of  trouble,  our  position  in 
Asia  had  always  been  regarded  by  our  pro- 
spective enemies  in  Europe  as  a  source  of  weak- 
ness. It  is  true  that  Lord  BeAconsfield,  by 
bringing  Indian  troops  to  Malta  on  an  occasion 
of  crisis,  gave  the  world  a  hint  of  futiu-e  possi- 
bilities ;  but  his  bold  stroke  was  derided  as 
a  theatrical  coup,  and  other  Eviropean  nations 
had  continued  to  regard  India  as  a  country 
where  the  great  Mutiny  would  be  surpassed 


in  horror  by  the  upheaval  that  would  inevitably 
follow  the  entanglement  of  Britain  in  a  great 
war.  At  the  outset  of  the  present  conflict  the 
German  Press  confidently  relied  upon  trouble 
in  India  as  a  large  factor  on  their  side. 

But  in  the  meantime  the  sympathetic  justice 
of  our  rule  in  India  had  been  doing  its  silent 
work ;  and  the  superficial  splashes  of  sedition 
in  densely-popxilated  centres  were  as  nothing 
compared  with  the  steady  undercurrent  of 
loyalty  all  over  the  peninsula,  which  had 
resulted  from  the  transparent  sincerity  of  our 
efforts  to  govern  India  in  her  own  best  interests. 
Yet  the  very  success  of  these  efforts  had  brought 
to  the  surface  new  difficulties,  arising  directly 
from  our  anomalous  position.  We,  a  fre6  and 
independent  people,  were  governing — by  the 
power  of  the  sword  in  the  last  resort — a  larger 
people  that  was  not  free  and  independent. 
The  more  they  learned  of  the  goodness  of 
our  Western  civilization  and  the  higher, 
especially,  we  raised  the  standard  of  oxir 
native  Indian  Army,  the  stronger  became 
the  pressure  upon  us  from  below,  seeking 
some  outlet  for  the  high  ambitions  which  we 
ourselves  had  awakened.  Looking  only  at  the 
military  side  of  the  question,  no  one  conversant 
with  the  facts  could  fail  to  see  that  the  time 
was  at  hand  when  we  could  no  longer  deny  to  a 
force  of  British  subjects,  with  the  glorious 
record  and  splendid  efficiency  of  our  native 
Indian  troops,  the  right  to  stand  shoulder  to 
shoulder  with  their  British  comrades  in  defence 
of  the  Empire,  wherever  it  might  be  assailed. 


161 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


163 


TYPICAL    GURKHA    RIFLES. 

[Underwood  &■  Underwood 

We  British  are  constitutionally  the  last 
people  in  the  world  to  take  unfair  advantage 
in  sport,  commerce  or  war  of  our  opponents. 
The  instinct  which  made  us  such  sticklers 
for  propriety  in  all  our  dealings  made  us  more 
reluctant  than  other  nations  would  feel, 
to  employ  coloured  troops  against  a  white 
enemy.  But  the  very  success  of  our  rule  in 
India  had  been  based  upon  our  conscientious 
disregard  of  colour.  The  very  value  of  our 
dusky  native  troops  lay  in  the  fact  that  they 
had  proved  themselves  worthy,  in  victory  and 
defeat,  to  fight  by  the  side  of  our  own  white 
men.  So,  even  if  our  active  alliance  with  the 
yellow  people  of  Japan  in  the  Far  East  and 
the  employment  of  dusky  French  Turcos  in 
Belgium  could  not  have  been  quoted  as  pre- 
cedents for  ignoring  colour  in  this  war,  it 
would  scarcely  have  been  possible  and  certainly 
not  wise  for  us  to  refuse  to  our  native  Indian 
Army  the  privilege  of  taking  its  place  beside 
British  troops  against  the  Germans. 

What,  then,  was  this  native  Indian  Army, 
of  which  we  have  such  good  reason  to  be  proud  ? 
To  begin  with,  the  average  Englishman,  who 
talked  about  the  Indian  Army,  generally  fell 
into  a  large  error  at  the  very  outset ;  be- 
cause he  almost  always  began  to  sing  the  praises 


of    the     "  little    Gurkhas."     With    them    he 
usually  mentioned  the  Sikhs  ;    but  it  was  only 
as  if  the  Uttle  Gurkha  cast  a  large  Sikh  shadow. 
The  substance  of  his  admiration  was  always 
for  the  former.     Far  be  it  from  us  to  under- 
value the  splendid  fighting  qualities  and  the 
glorious  military  record  of  the  Gurkha.     The 
ten  regiments  of  Gurkha  Rifles — little,  stocky 
men  in  dull  green  uniforms,  all  looking  exactly 
alike,  "as  if  they  had  come  out  of  a  quarter- 
master's store"  —  are    probably    surpassed  in 
fighting  value  by  no  block  of  ten  regiments  of 
their  kind  in  any  other  army.     The  names  of 
Bhurtpore,     Aliwal,     Sobraon,    Delhi,    Kabul, 
Chitral,    Tirah,    Burma,    and    China    appeared 
among   their  records,   a   glorious  summary   of 
British  military  history  in  Asia  ;     and  if  some 
European  names  are  to  be  added  now,  there  is 
no  doubt  that  the  additions  are  equally  honour- 
able   and    well    deserved.      But    this   was    no 
reason  why  Englishmen,  in  speaking  or  writing 
of  the  native  Indian  Army,      should   put   the 
Gurkha     (even   with   the   Sikh   for   a  shadow) 
first  and  the  rest  almost  nowhere,  seeing  that, 
strictly  speaking,  the  Gurkha  did  not  belong  to 
the   native    Indian   Army    at    all.     He   was  a 
mercenary,     a     subject     of    the     independent 
Kingdom  of  Nepal,  in  which  we  had  by  treaty — 
a  "  scrap  of  paper  "  which  has  been  faithfully 
observed  by  both  sides  since  1814,  when  General 
Ochterlony's   soldierly   generosity  to   a  brave 
enemy  converted  the  defeated  foe  into  a  loyal 
friend — the  right  to  recruit  these  active  little 
hillmen  for  the  army  in  India.     Cheery  and  self- 
confident,  with  none  of  the  shyness  and  reserve 
which    embarrass    acquaintanceship    with    the 
natives    of    India,    the     Gurkha     exhibits     a 
natural  aptitude  for  making  friends  with  the 
British    soldier.     Stalwart    Highlanders    were 
always  his  especial  chums :    and  on  our  side 
Tommy  Atkins  was  never  slow  to  reciprocate 
the  friendship  of  these  smart  httle  Nepalese, 
whose  fidelity  to  the  British  had  been  so  often 
shown,   notably   at  Delhi,  where   they  fought 
on  with  us  imtil  327  out  of  a  contingent  of  490 
were  killed.     No  Briton  can  visit  the  monimaent 
on    Delhi's    famous    Ridge    without    willingly 
grasping  a  Gurkha  hand  in  friendship  whenever 
it  is  proffered.     All  the  same,  when  we  talk 
of    the    Indian    Army    proper,    we    must    not 
give  the  Gurkha  the  first  place.     Nor  did  his 
employment  in  Europe  raise  the  same  permanent 
world-wide  issues  which  were  involved  in  putting 
our  Indian  fellow-subjects  by  the  side  of  the 
British  soldier  in  the  fighting  line  against  the 
Germans.     Incidentally  it  may  be  mentioned 
that    the  Gurkha   is    a    Hindu,     but    is    free 
from  many  ceiste  prejudices  of  his  co-religionists. 


164 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


GROUP   OF   INDIAN   OFFICERS,  with  Orderlies,  etc.,  a;id  British  Staff  Officers  in  mufti. 

[Sport  &  General- 


On    the    other    hand    he    is   a    great  believer 
in  devils. 

Undoubtedly  the  first  place  among  the  races 
and  castes  which  compose  our  native  Indian 
Army  must  be  given  to  the  Sikhs.  Not  only 
were  they  the  most  numerous  among  the  native 
wearers  of  his  Majesty's  uniform,  but,  without 
any  disrespect  to  the  other  factors  of  our  Army, 
they  might  be  described  as  the  backbone  of 
British  military  prestige  in  the  East.  It  was 
always  understood,  of  course,  by  our  enemies 
that  there  was  the  British  soldier,  supported  by 
the  British  Fleet,  to  be  reckoned  with :  but,  in 
the  East,  British  soldiers  were — compared  with 
the  vast  interests  which  we  had  to  safeguard — 
few  and,  through  difficulties  of  distant  transport 
and  other  causes,  very  expensive.  We  were, 
therefore,  peculiarly  forttmate  in  having,  in  the 
Sikhs,  material  for  our  Army  which,  for  trxist- 
worthiness  and  courage,  for  confidence  in  its 
British  leaders  and  stern  devotion  to  duty,  for  dis- 
cipline and  soldierly  skill,  could  not  be  surpassed. 
When  Ranjit  Singh,  the  "  Lion  of  the  Punjab," 
lived,  mutual  respect  and  courtesy  marked  the 
relations  between  otu"  Indian  territories  and  the 
warrior  dominion  which  he  had  established  over 
the  Land  of  the  Five  Rivers ;  but  after  his  death 
restless  spirits  among  the  Sikhs  forced  war 
upon  us,  and  it  is  admitted  in  our  military  annals 
that  if  the  enemy  had  been  better  led  the  vary- 
ing fortunes  of  our  Sikh  wars  might  not  have 
ended  finally  in  our  favour.  But  so  it  was  ; 
and,  like  the  Gurkhas,  the  Sikhs  quickly  turned 
from  formidable  foes  to  staunch  friends.  From 
the  date  of  the  Sikh  wars,  when  the  strongest 
provinces  of  our  modern  India  were  still  foreign 
territory,  there  was  no  great  episode  in  the 
history  of  British  arms  in  India  which  is  not 
enrolled  upon  the  colours  of  Sikh  regiments.  In 
all  Asia  there  was  scarcely  a  mile  of  British  terri- 
tory which  had  not  known  the  Sikh  soldier  or 
policenaaa.     Clean,     tall,     and     magnificently 


bearded,  with  an  upward  sweep  which  took 
beard,  moustache,  whiskers,  and  hair,  all 
together,  under  the  turban,  the  Sikh  looked 
the  embodiment  of  the  high  soldierly  virtues 
which  he  possessed,  with  a  suggestion  of  the 
tiger's  ferocity,  should  his  passions  be  let  loose. 
The  desperate  stands  which  small  parties 
of  British  Sikhs  have  made  against  hopeless 
odds  are  chronicled  among  the  glorious 
incidents  of  British  history  in  India — 
one  such  was  the  occasion  of  the  establish- 
ment of  the  "  Indian  Heroes'  Fund  "  some 
years  ago — and  so  truly  were  the  Sikhs  bred  to 
the  fighting  type  that  it  is  scarcely  an  exag- 
geration to  say  that  whenever  you  saw  a  man 
in  the  vmiform  of  a  Sikh  regiment,  you  saw  a 
man  who  would  be  a  steady  and  courageous 
comrade  to  you  in  the  worst  circumstances  of 
war. 

Who,  then,  is  the  Sikh  ?  As  enUsted  in  our 
Indian  Army,  the  Sikhs  were  neither  a  race  nor 
a  sect.  Nor,  although  they  were  Hindu  by  origin, 
could  they  be  described  as  a  caste.  Every  Sikh 
enUsted  in  our  service  was  a  Singh,  meaning 
"  lion,"  i.e.,  a  member  of  a  fighting  brother- 
hood. No  one  was  bom  a  Singh  and  no  woman 
could  become  one.  Each  man  was  initiated 
into  the  fmth — a  purer  faith  than  Hinduism, 
involving  little  more  than  worshipping  God  as 
"  the  Timeless  One "  and  reverencing  the 
Gurus  as  His  prophets — by  certain  rites  on 
reaching  the  prescribed  age.  Thenceforward 
he  was  bound  by  vows  to  avoid  idolatry,  to 
abjure  alcohol  and  tobacco,  and  to  cultivate  all 
the  manly  virtues.  His  hair  was  never  cut. 
Cattle  were  sacred  to  him.  Love  of  military 
adventure  and  the  desire  to  save  money  have 
been  weU  described  as  his  ruling  passions.  Of 
course,  the  Singh  was  human  and  sometimes, 
especially  among  the  higher  classes,  the  vows  of 
abstemiousness  might  sit  lightly  on  his  con- 
science ;    but,  take  him    all  in   all,  the    Sikh 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


165 


soldier  qf  to-day  is  a  worthy  representative  of 
the  warrior  fraternity  which  raised  the  "  Lion 
of  the  Punjab  "  to  his  great  miUtary  eminence. 
Into  the  differences  between  the  Sikh  clans, 
such  as  the  Jat  Sikhs  and  Mazbi  Sikhs,  there  is 
no  need,  to  enter  here  ;  but  the  latter  provided 
us  only  with  some  Pioneer  regiments,  and  when 
we  spoke  of  a  Sikh  sepoy  or  sowar,  it  was  almc  st 
always  a  Jat  Sikh  that  we  meant.  The 
name  "  Jat,"  pronounced  "  Jut,"  meant  that 
the  Sikh  was  by  descent  a  "  Jat,"  pro- 
nounced "  Jaht,"  a  strict  Hindu  caste  of  the 
Punjab  plains.  From  this  caste,  a  race  of  superb 
horsemen  from  childhood,  some  of  our  finest 
Indian  cavalry  was  recruited,  and  Indian  mili- 
tary history  is  full  of  gallant  incidents  to  -the 
credit  of  the  Jat  horse.  One  regiment,  the 
14th  Murray's  Jat  Lancers,  retains  the  caste 
name  in  its  official  title. 


INDIAN  CAVALRY:    a  Typical  Sowar. 

iTopieal. 


Next  to  the  Sikhs  in  numbers  in  the  British 
service,  and  therefore  before  the  Gxirkhas, 
the  Punjabi  Musulmans  must  be  placed. 
They  w^sre,  of  course,  Mahomedans,  though 
not  of  a  fanatical  kind.  They  were  of 
mixed  descent,  but  uniformly  strict  in  observ- 
ance of  their  religious  obligations.  They  were, 
however,  very  tolerant  of  the  religious  beliefs  of 
others  and  gave  very  Uttle  trouble  in  canton- 
ments. Good  all-round  soldiers,  easy  for  any 
real  soldiers  to  be  friends  with,  the  Punjabi 
Musulmans  deserved  a  much  higher  place  than 
was  usually  given  to  them  in  British  esteem, 
seeing  that,  next  to  the  Sikhs,  they  were  the 
most  numerous  class  of  natives  in  our  Army  and 
it  was  they  who  had  been  recruited  to  fill  the 
places  of  abandoned  regiments  of  other  less 
useful  races.  "  Sikhs,  Punjabis,  and  Gurkhas, 
side  by  side  with  their  British  comrades  " — 
this  quotation  from  a  Mutiny  record  placed  the 
three  most  distinguished  and  valuable  elements 
of  our  Indian  Army  in  their  proper  order  ;  and 
it  was  to  be  hoped  that  one  result  of  the  use  of 
Indian  troops  in  European  war  would  be  to  bring 
home  to  the  British  public  that  the  Indian  Army 
did  not  entirely  consist  of  the  Gurkha  with  a 
Sikh  shadow,  but  that,  next  to  the  Sikhs,  the 
Punjabi  Musulmans  deserved  the  highest  place 
in  our  esteem  and  gratitude. 

Not  far  behind  the  Punjabi  Musulmans  an 
accurate  judge  of  the  fighting  values  of  the 
native  factors  of  our  Indian  Army  would 
probably  have  placed  the  Pathans.  These — 
although  hastily -raised  Pathan  levies  did  grand 
service  for  us  in  the  Mutiny — were  a  com- 
paratively recent  addition  to  the  fighting 
strength  of  our  Indian  Empire,  representing 
as  they  did  the  gradual  spread  of  British 
prestige  and  the  influence  of  the  Indian  rupee 
over  the  wild  fastnesses  which  make  the  natural 
frontier  between  India  and  Afghanistan. 
Formerly  the  "  Gate  of  India  "  on  the  North- 
West  Frontier  used  to  stand  open  for  any  suffi- 
ciently bold  and  powerful  invader.  Assyrians, 
Persians,  Greeks,  Arabs,  Afghans,  Tartars,  and 
others — at  least  thirty  distinct  invasions,  all 
more  or  less  successful,  of  northern  India, 
besides  innumerable  plundering  forays,  are 
recorded  in  history  ;  but,  although  it  is  true 
that,  when  this  great  war  broke  out  in  Europe, 
the  Pathan  still  found  his  shortest  cut  to 
wealth  and  honour  through  the  rocky  defiles 
between  Peshawar  and  Kabul,  it  wae  only 
as  a  recruit  for  our  Army  that  he  came.  With 
strong  featui-es,  which  support  his  claim  to  be 
a  descendant  of  the  lost  tribes  of  Israel — 
a  claim  almost  substantiated,  too,  by  the  fact 


166 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


that  his  names  renxinded  us  always  of  the  Old 
Testament,  eis  Ishak  (Isaac),  Yakub  (Jacob), 
Yusuf  (Joseph),  and  so  on — the  wild  Pathan 
was  a  very  unkempt  and  unclean  looking 
person.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  he  had 
almost  all  the  soldierly  virtues  in  a  high  degree. 
He  was  a  bad  enemy — one  of  the  worst — ^but 
a  good  friend  ;  and  his  record  in  British  service 
was  splendid,  both  for  dare-devil  dash  and 
dogged  endurance.  He  was  the  ideal  skir- 
misher in  difficult  country.  His  language  was 
the  guttural  but  easily-learnt  Pushtu,  and  in 
religion  he  was  a  Mahomedan  of  the  most 
fanatical  kind.  He  was  a  sharp  weapon 
which  needed  careful  handling  ;  but  a  British 
officer  who  knew  how  to  handle  his  Pathans 
would  be  followed  cheerfully  to  death  any- 
where. 

From  the  Pathans,  whose  very  name  con- 
jured up  memories  of  all  the  stormy  history 
of  our  hard-fought  North- Western  Frontier  of 
India,  the  mind's  eye  naturally  travelled 
down  that  frontier  to  the  land  of  the  Baluchis, 
increasingly  employed  in  our  frontier  Lne. 
Here,  too,  the  mountain  barrier  was  pierced  by 
passes  which  lead  from  Afghanistan  to  India  ; 
but  compared  with  the  stormy  torrent  by  which 
our  military  position  at  Peshawar,  with  its 
flying  buttress  in  the  AU  Masjid  Fort,  had  so 
often  been  shaken,  the  stream  of  fitful  human 
traffic  which  flowed  slowly  past  our  Quetta 
stronghold  might  be  regarded  as  a  peaceful 
backwater  ;  and  to  some  extent  this  was  reflected 
in  the  character  of  the  native  troops,  Baluchis 
and  Brahuis,  which  we  derive  from  this  region. 
Devout,  but  not  fanatical,  Mahomedans,  they 
made  cheery,  tough,  and  covirteous  warriors, 
serving  always  with  credit  to  us  and  to  them- 
selves. Fine,  well-set-up  men,  the  Baluchis 
always  made  a  good  show  among  other  troops  ; 
and  they  were  as  useful  in  the  field  as  amenable 
in  cantonments. 

Turning  now  to  the  Hindu  regiments,  we 
come  at  once  to  an  element  which,  for  exactly 
opposite  re6isons,  needed  as  careful  handling 
as  the  fiercely  fanatical  Moslems  of  the  North- 
West  Frontier.  The  leading  infantry  regiment 
on  the  Indian  Army  list  was  the  1st  Brahmans, 
and  the  3rd  regiment  was  Brahman  also.  These 
Brahmans  are  Hindus  of  the  Hindus,  so  fenced 
round  with  holy  caste  restrictions  that 
it  was  high  testimony  to  the  sympathetic 
skill  of  our  military  administration  that 
these  fine  old  regiments  still  retained  their 
pride  of  place  in  the  Army  List.  It  was  not 
too  much  to  say  that  if  by  any  nuschance  in 
peace  the  men  of^  a  Brahman  regiment  and  a 
Pathan  regiment  were  left  together  without 


any  control  there  would  not  be  a  man  left 
alive  in  the  weaker  corps,  whichever  that  might 
be,  on  the  following  day.  War  makes  large 
differences,  of  course,  for  Brahmans  and  Pathans 
are  both  human  and  both  soldiers  at  heart ; 
but  against  the  extended  employment  of  the 
very  highest  Hindu  castes  always  had  to  be  set 
the  difficulties  which  religious  restrictions  im- 
posed upon  them.  Nevertheless,  the  Brahmans 
had  done  good  service,  both  in  Afghanistan 
and  Burma. 

Other  high-caste  Hindus  who  supplied  our 
Indian  Army  with  splendid  fighting  men  were 
the  Rajputs  and  the  Mahrattas.  Both  names 
loom  large  in  the  history  of  India  ;  and  pro- 
bably there  was  no  living  race  of  men  who  had 
more  reason  to  be  proud  of  their  lineage  than 
thie  Rajputs.  Their  very  name  meant  "  of 
Royal  blood,"  and  in  no  community  had  the 
pride  of  ancestry  worked  so  strictly  to  keep  the 
blood  pure  from  age  to  age.  The  story  of 
Chitor,  where  the  beleaguered  Rajputs  killed  all 
their  wives  and  children  and  perished,  fighting, 
to  a  man  themselves  rather  than  give  a  Rajput 
princess  as  wife  to  Akbar,  the  mighty  INIoslem 
Emperor  of  Delhi,  makes  one  of  the  bloodiest 
and  most  glorious  pages  in  the  history  of  the 
world's  chivalry  ;  and  the  modern  Rajput, 
although  he  might  be  only  a  foot  soldier  in  our 
Indian  Army,  was  instinct  with  the  spirit  of  his 
race.^  Great  credit  might  our  government  of 
India  take  from  the  fact  that  the  oldest  of  our 
Rajput  regiments,  the  Queen's  Own  Rajputs, 
still  held  its  place  as  the  second  corps  of  infantry 
in  the  Indian  Army  List.  High-caste  Hindus, 
proud,  pure-blooded  warriors,  the  Rajputs  were 
not  men  whom  we  might  fear  to  place  before 
the  most  determined  European  foe,  if  caste 
restrictions  could  be  observed  luibroken. 

Much  that  has  been  said  of  the  Brahmans 
and  Rajputs  applies  to  the  Mahrattas,  who  were 
also  Hindus  and  inclined  to  be  fanatical  in  all 
matters  affecting  their  C3Ste  and  creed.  This 
was  the  natural  result  of  their  history  of  almost 
ceaseless  warfare  against  Mahomedan  invaders. 
Holding  their  mountain  strongholds  of  the 
Western  Ghauts  against  all  assailants*  and 
occupying  the  plains  on  either  side  of  the  great 
hills,  the  Mahrattas  were  a  power  to  be  reckoned 
with  in  the  destinies  of  India  ;  and  our  Mahratta 
wars  were  protracted,  difficult,  and  costly. 
Now,  in  our  service,  these  high-spirited 
mountaineers,  although  not  great  in  stature,  nor 
thick-set  in  physique,  made  very  tough,  good 
fighters. 

Of  the  remaining  Hindu  elements  in  our 
Indiein  Army,  only  two  need  be  mentioned. 
The  Madrasis,  natives  of  the  Madras  province. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OR    THE    WAR. 


167 


were  a  dwindling  factor.  Intelligent  and  well- 
educated  as  a  class,  they  had  impressed  many 
of  their  British  officers  with  a  high  sense  of  their 
value  as  fighting  men  ;  but  this  opinion  had  not 
been  reflected  in  the  military  policy  of  the  years 
before  the  war.  It  was  only  natural  that 
officers  who  had  devoted  their  lives  to  per- 
fecting a  regiment  should  take  a  pride  in  its 
merit ;  and  in  no  service  in  the  world,  perhaps, 
was  this  tendency  more  marked  than  among  the 
British  officers  of  the  Indian  Army,  who  were 
entrusted  with  material  which  varied  in  every 
detail.  Hence  it  arose  that  the  "  shop " 
talk  of  a  British  officer  of  a  Gurkha  battalion 
was  often  almost  intolerable  to  officers  of  other 
units ;  while  the  nickname  of  one  brilliant 
frontier  corps  as  "  God's  Own  Guides  "  is  elo- 
quent of  the  mental  suffering  which  a  mixed  mess 
had  often  endured  when  an  officer  of  the  Guides 
was  fairly  started  talking  about  his  men.  So 
the  Madrasi  sepoy  had  enthusiastic  defenders 
of  his  reputation  as  a  fighting  man ;  but,  even 
if  all  that  his  apologists  said  was  true,  it  could 
not  be  suggested  that  in  finding  more  room 
for  the  Dogra  the  Army  suffered  by  the  loss 
of  the  Madrasi.  For  the  Dogra,  who  was  also 
a  high-caste  Hindu,  filled  three  entire  regiments, 
besides  "  class "  squadrons  or  companies  of 
many  others.  He  was  the  typical  stalwart 
yeoman  of  the  Pimjab,  recruited  from  the 
sub-Himalayan  regions  of  the  North-west. 
Like  the  Mahrattas,  the  Dogras  had  retained 
their  spirit  as  fighting  Hindus  by  constant 
contact  with  Mohamedan  neighbours  ;  but  their 
Hinduism  was  not  fanatical.  In  many  re- 
spects they  resembled  the  Sikhs.      Patient  as 


their  own  bullocks  under  hardship,  they  were 
stiirdy  and  manly,  courteous  and  brave.  Per- 
haps it  was  the  wide  horizon  of  the  Punjab 
plains  and  the  community  of  interests  which 
must  be  felt  by  all  dwellers  therein,  who  were 
equally  at  the  mercy  of  the  weather  which  God 
sends  to  them,  that  had  given  to  the  Punjabis, 
whether  Musulman  or  Hindu,  that  broader 
spirit  which  rendered  possible  the  rise  of  the 
Sikh  brotherhood  with  its  pure  religion  and 
high  ideals.  However  this  may  be,  it  is  certain 
that  in  the  Dogras  of  the  Punjab  we  had  a 
Hindu  factor  of  great  military  value,  resembling 
in  many  ways  that  of  their  neighbours,  the 
Punjabi  Musulnxans. 

From  this  brief  review  of  the  materials  from 
which  our  native  Indian  Army  was  drawn 
we  c£Ui  see  that  it  was  composed  of  pure-blooded 
races  with  fighting  traditions,  of  proved  service, 
and  splendid  conduct  in  the  field,  in  every 
way  worthy  to  be  welcomed  as  comrades  by 
the  British  troops  who  were  to  serve  with 
them  against  the  King-Emperor's  enemies. 
We  can  also  see  that  those  upon  whom  the  duty 
fell  of  selecting  Indian  units  to  serve  with  our 
own  Expeditionary  Force  in  Europe  had  an 
invidious  and  difficvilt  task.  Not  only  was 
there  embarras  de  richesses  in  the  wide  range 
of  varying  merits  to  be  considered ;  but  there 
were  also  the  practical  obstacles,  much  greater 
in  the  case  of  some  units  than  of  others,  of 
bringing  into  the  close  cohesion  necessary  for 
distant  service  the  mixed  force  selected.  This 
difficulty  was  not  lessened  by  the  natural  desire 
of  the  authorities  to  recognize  the  self-sacrific- 
ing loyalty  of  the  rulers  of  -the  Native  States 


GROUP    OF    MAHOMEDAN    OFFICERS    AND    MEN,    LANCERS    AND     INFANTRY. 


168 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


by  giving  to  their  Imperial  Sendee  Troops  a 
chance  of  distinction  by  the  side  of  our  own 
regiments  on  European  service.  In  our  native 
infantry  regiments  each  battalion  had  from 
thirteen  to  fifteen  British  officers  in  addition 
to  sixteen  native  officers,  whereas  the  Im- 
perial Service  Corps  of  the  Native  States  were 
commanded  entirely  by  native  officers  with 
British  advisers  only.  Although  the.  troops 
themselves  might  fairly  be  described  as  crack 
corps,  the  want  of  British  officers  would  un- 
doubtedly be  felt  in  employment  on  any  large 
scale  in  Europe.  The  readiness  of  the  Imperial 
Service  Troops,  however,  to  fall  into  line  for 
the  defence  of  the  Empire  was  fine  evidence 
of  the  status  which  our  British  Government 
of  India  occupied  in  the  native  mind  ;  and  even 
in  the  case  of  our  own  Indian  troops  it  must 
always  be  remembered  that  the  best  native 
soldiers,  especially  in  the  cavalry,  did  not 
really  serve  for  their  pay,  but,  as  befits  men 
of  good  family,  for  military  honour. 

Another  point  to  be  remembered  in  con 
nexionwith  the  Indian  Army  is  that  it  could  not 
have  fixmished  a  complete  field  force  of  natives 
alone.  So  far  as  the  cavalry  and  infantry  are 
concerned  the  native  regiments  might  always 
be  trusted  to  give  a  good  giccoimt  of  them- 
selves, even  without  any  "  stiffening "  of 
British  troops ;  but  the  instinct  of  self-pre- 
servation, engendered  in  the  mind  of  British 
nilers  in  India  through  the  experience  of  the 
Mutiny,  insisted  upon  the  paramount  necessity 
that  artillery  in  India  shall  be  entirely  in 
British  hands.  There  were  indeed  twelve 
mountain  batteries,  in  which  service  is  so 
popular,  especially  among  the  Sikhs,  that  they 
could  always  command  recruits  of  exceptional 
physique  and  the  highest  quality,  with  the 
result  that  in  our  frontier  wars  the  little  guns 
were  always  served  to  the  admiration  of  all 
beholders  ;  but  with  this  exception  there  were 
no  native  gunners  in  India.  Horse,  field,  and 
garrison  artillery  were  solely  British. 

In  any  case,  therefore,  a  force  in  which  Indian 
troops  were  included  must  necessarily  have 
been  a  composite  force,  although  in  the  thirty- 


A    VETERAN     SUBADA-MAJOR     OF 
THE    45th  RATTRAY'S    SIKHS. 

nine  regiments  of  cavalry  and  130  regiments 
of  infantry,  in  addition  to  the  mixed  Corps  of 
Guides  and  the  ten  regiments  of  Gurkha 
Rifles,  there  was  ample  material  from  which 
to  select  as  fine  a  contingent  of  the  two  arms 
as  any  general  officer  cotdd  desire  to  command". 
The  real  diffictdty  was  to  make  the  selection 
and  at  the  same  time  to  remember  the  claims 
of  the  loyal  Native  States,  and  to  disappoint 
the  legitimate  ambitions  of  the  bulk  of  the 
eager  troops  as  little  as  might  be.  And  of 
course  only  those  to  whom  the  task  was  given 
were  cognisant  of  all  the  circixmstances  which 
influenced  the  selection.  It  was  made  with 
a  care  appropriate  to  the  occasion ;  for  the 
occasion  was  the  most  momentous  which  had 
occiorred  in  the  history  of  the  Indian  Army — 
momentous  not  only  for  that  Army  or  for  India, 
but  also  for  the  world  at  large,  as  definitely 
erasing  the  "  colour  line  "  in  war. 


CHAPTER  XI. 


THE    RALLY   OF   THE    EMPIRE. 


MORAIi   AS   WELL   A3   MATERIAL   SUFI OBT  OPINION    IN    CANADA   AND   AUSTRALIA ThE      KiNG's 

Message  to  the  Dominions — ^Effect  of  Sir  Edward  Grey's  Speech  —  The  Canadian  and 
South  African  Press — ^The  King's  Second  Message  to  the  Dominions  —  Loyalty  of  India 
— Lord  Hardinge's  Speech  in  Council — Indian  Ruling  Princes'  Offers  of  Men,  Personal 
Service,  and  Money — Statement  in  Parliament  —  The  King -Emperor's  Message  to  India 
— ^The  Empire  United. 


IMPORTANT  as  were  the  offers  of  help, 
both  of  men  and  of  provisions,  which  the 
Self -Governing  Dominions  and  the  Indian 
Empire  made  to  the  Mother  Country 
almost  immediately  after  the  outbreak  of  the 
war,  the  knowledge  that  these  great  daughter- 
nations  were  morally  convinced  of  the  justice 
of  the  British  cause  was  a  factor  of  even 
more  far-reaching  importance.  Great  as  was 
the  necessity  of  organizing  and  expanding 
the  Imperial  forces,  and  thus  creating 
an  extra  army  or  armies  to  reinforce 
the  British  Expeditionary  Force  in  France, 
urgent  as  was  the  need  of  taking  advant- 
age of  the  prompt  offers  of  help  which 
came  from  all  parts  of  the  Empire,  the  necessity 
of  convincing  the  Self-Governing  Dominions 
and  the  Empire  at  large  of  the  righteousness 
of  the  cause  for  which  Great  Britain  was 
fighting  was  more  imperative  still.  For  in  the 
long  run  the  consciousness  of  the  justice  of 
the  principles  for  which  a  people  is  fighting 
alone  can  ensure  the  massing  of  material  force 
sufficient  to  secure  material  victory. 

Evidence  that  the  case  for  Great  Britain 
was  fully  understood  and  thoroughly 
approved,  not  only  by  our  own  peoples 
but  by  the  bulk  of  the  neutral  States  of  the 
world,  was  not  long  in  presenting  itself.  The 
Dominions  as  a  whole  had  satisfied  themselves 
that  the  British  cause  was  just  before  Sir 
Edward  Grey  had  made  it  plain  by  his  speech 
of  August  3  that  the  British  Government  had 


done  everything  short  of  sacrificing  the  honour 
of  the  country  to  avoid  war.  In  the  words 
of  Sir  Richard  McBride,  the  Premier  of  British 
Columbia,  ''  Should  it  unfortunately  develop 
that  Great  Britain  is  compelled  to  engage  in 
hostilities,  Canada  will  automatically  be  at 
war  also "  ;  while  in  Australia  Mr.  Fisher, 
the  ex-Prime  Minister,  declared,  "  Should 
honour  demand  the  Mother  Gotintry  to  take 
part  in  hostilities,  Australians  will  stand 
beside  her  to  the  last  man  and  the  last  shilling." 
These  sentiments  found  expression  in  the  offers 
of  help  of  men  and  material  which  have  been 
described  in  the  preceding  chapter.  To  these 
offers  the  King  replied  by  a  message  to  the 
Overseas  Dominions  : — 

I  desire  to  express  to  my  people  of  the 
Overseas  Dominions  with  what  appreciation 
and  pride  I  have  received  the  messages 
from  their  respective  Governments  during 
the  last  few  days. 

These  spontaneous  assurances  of  their 
fullest  support  recall  to  me  the  generous, 
self-sacrificing  help  given  by  them  in  the 
past  to  the  Mother  Country. 

I  shall  be  strengthened  in  the  discharge 
of  the  great  responsibility  which  rests  upon 
me  by  the  confident  belief  that  in  this  time 
of  trial  my  Empire  will  stand  united,  calm 
resolute,  trusting  in  God. — George  R.I. 

Sir     Edward     Grey's    speech     produced  its 
inevitable  effect  throughout  the   Enlpire.     In      • 


169 


170 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


the   words  of  Sir  James  Whitney,  the  Premier 
of  Ontario  : 

The  momentous  crisis  we  are  now  facing 
makes  it  plain  what  Canada's  course  must 
be.  That  course  is  to  exert  our  whole 
strength  and  power  at  once  on  behalf  of  the 
Empire.  I  know  my  fellow  Canadians  too 
well  to  doubt  they  will  respond  with  en- 
thusiastic loyalty  to  the  appeal.  Sir  Robert 
Borden  has  all  Canada  behind  him  if  steps 
must  be  taken  to  join  in  fighting  the  Empire's 
battles,  because  the  contest  is  forced  upon 
Great  Britain,  It  is  our  contest  as  much  as 
hers,  and  upon  the  issue  of  events  depends 
our  national  existence.  Never  before  in  our 
history  has  the  call  to  duty  and  honour 
been  so  clear  and  imperative,  and  Canada 
will  neither  quail  nor  falter  at  the  test. 
The  British  Government  have  done  every- 
thing possible  to  avoid  war  and  sought  peace 
with  an  earnestness  worthy  of  responsible 
statesmen.  But  a  dishonourable  peace  would 
prove  disastrous  to  the  Empire.  We  should 
be  unworthy  of  the  blood  that  rvins  in  our 
veins  if  we  sought  to  avoid  an  inevitable 
conflict.  I  rejoice  at  the  evidences  of  Imperial 
imity  displayed  on  all  sides,  and  if  our  cause 
is  to  preserve  liberty  and  to  resist  unjust 
aggression,  it  will  evoke  all  that  is  best  and 
noblest  in  the  Canadian  character. 

Not  the  least  remarkable  of  the  utterances 
of  the  Dominion  statesmen  was  that  of  General 
Botha,  fourteen  years  before  the  ablest  and  the 
most  dreaded  of  the  Boer  leaders;  In  the  course 
of  a  speech  delivered  on  September  9,  he  said 
that  at  the  request  of  the  Imperial  Government 
his  Government  had  decided  to  undertake  opera- 
tions in  German  South- West  Africa.  Then  he 
continued : — 

There  could  only  be  one  reply  to  the  Im- 
perial Government's  request.  There  were 
many  in  South  Africa  who  did  not  recognize 
the  tremendous  seriousness  and  great  possi- 
bilities of  this  war,  and  some  thought  that  the 
storm  did  not  threaten  South  Africa.  This 
was  a  most  narrow-minded  conception.  The 
Empire  was  at  war ;  consequently  South 
Africa  was  at  war  with  the  common  enemy. 
Only  two  patlLS  were  open — the  path  of  faith- 
fulness to  duty  and  honour  and  the  path  of 
disloyalty  and  dishonour.  A  characteristic 
of  the  South  African  people  was  their  high 
sense  of  honour,  and  they  would  maintain 
their  reputation  for  honotirable  dealing 
untarnished.  To  forget  their  loyalty  to  the 
Empire  in  this  hour  of  trial  would  be  scarfda- 
lous  and  shameful,  and  would  blacken  South 


Africa  in  the  eyes  of  the  whole  world.     Of 
this  South  Africans   were  incapable. 

They  had  endured  some  of  the  greatest 
sacrifices  that  could  be  demanded  of  a  people, 
but  they  had  always  kept  before  them  ideals 
founded  on  Christianity,  and  never  in  their 
darkest  days  had  they  sought  to  gain  their 
ends  by  treasonable  means.  The  path  of 
treason  was  an  unknown  path  to  Dutch  and 
English  alike.  Their  duty  and  their  conscience 
alike  bade  them  be  faithful  and  true  to  the 
Imperial  Government  in  all  respects  in  this 
hour  of  darkness  and  trouble.  That  was  the 
attitude  of  the  Union  Government  ;  that  was 
the  attitudeof  the  people  of  South  Africa. 

Nor  was  the  Press  of  the  Dominions  less  em- 
phatic in  the  position  it  assumed.  Before  the 
outbreak  of  hostilities  the  Toronto  Olobe  said  : — 

Of  one  thing  let  there  be  no  cavil  or  question  ;  if  it 
means  war  for  Great  Britain,  it  means  war  also  for 
Canada.  If  it  means  war  for  Canada  it  means  also 
the  union  of  Canadians  for  the  defence  of  Canada,  for 
the  maintenance  of  the  Empire's  integrity,  and  for 
the  preservation  in  the  world  of  Great  Britain's 
ideals  of  democratic  government  and  life, 

while  an  article  in  the  Cape  Times  after  the 
publication  of  Sir  Edward  Grey's  speech  gave 
a  fair  example  of  the  effect  of  that  utterance 
in  the  South  African  Union : — 

We  shall  fight  to  save  Europe  from  the  threatened 
tyranny  which  has  troubled  her  peace  since  the 
German  Empire  was  first  founded  upon  blood  and 
iron,  to  guard  for  ourselves  and  for  those  who  have 
put  their  trust  in  us  the  heritage  of  freedom,  and, 
above  all,  to  redeem  the  solemn  pledges  given  many 
years  ago  that  the  might  of  Britain  should  be  inter- 
posed to  shield  the  weaker  nations  of  Western  Europe 
against  aggression.  Never  did  a  nation  go  into  war 
in  a  cause  better  fitted  to  draw  together  the  peoples 
that  have  learnt  to  know  liberty  imder  the  British 
Flag  .  .  .  Britain  has  stood  for  peace  until  the 
arrogance  and  madness  of  the  German  Emperor 
have  forced  the  sword  into  her  hand.  Germany  has 
deliberately  taken  the  role  of  international  highway- 
man, and  the  highwayman,  sooner  or  later,  meets  his 
deserts. 

The  sentiments  felt  by  the  whole  Empire 
were  finely  expressed  in  the  further  message 
which  the  King  issued  to  the  Governments 
and  people  of  his  Self-Governing  Dominions  : — 

During  the  past  few  weeks  the  peoples 
of  My  whole  Empire  at  Home  and  Over- 
seas have  moved  with  one  mind  and  pur- 
pose to  confront  and  overthrow  an  im- 
paralleled  assault  upon  the  continuity  of 
civilization  and  the  peace  of  mankind. 

The  calamitous  conflict  is  not  of  My 
seeking.  My  voice  has  been  cast  through- 
out on  the  side  of  .peace.  My  Ministers 
earnestly  strove  to  allay  the  causes  of  strife 
and  to  appease  differences  with  which  My 
Empire   was   not   concerned.     Had   I  stood 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Ill 


H.M.  THE  KING. 


\W.  Or  D.  Downey. 


172 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR, 


SIR  PERTAB   SINGH, 
the  Veteran  of  the  Indian  Expeditionary  Force. 

[Lafayette. 

aside  when,  in  defiance  of  pledges  to  which 
My  Kingdom  was  a  party,  the  soil  of  Belgium 
was  violated  and  her  cities  laid  desolate, 
when  the  very  life  of  the  French  nation  was 
threatened  with  extinction,  I  should  have 
sacrificed  My  honour  and  given  to  destruction 
the  liberties  of  My  Empire  and  of  mankind. 
I  rejoice  that  every  part  of  the  Empire  is 
with  me  in  this  decision. 

Paramount  regard  for  treaty  faith  and 
the  pledged  word  of  rulers  and  peoples  is 
the  common  heritage  of  Great  Britain  and 
of  the  Empire. 

My  peoples  in  the  Self-Goveming  Do- 
minions have  shown  beyond  all  doubt 
that  they  wholeheartedly  endorse  the  grave 
decision  which  it  was  necessary  to  take. 

My  personal  knowledge  of  the  loyalty 
and    devotion    of    My    Oversea    Dominions 


had  led  me  to  expect  that  they  would  cheer- 
fully make  the  great  efforts  and  bear  the 
great  sacrifices  which  the  present  conflict 
entails.  The  full  measure  in  wliich  they 
f  have  placed  their  services  and  resources  at 
My  disposal  fills  me  with  gratitude,  and  I 
am  proud  to  be  able  to  show  to  the  world 
that  My  Peoples  Oversea  are  as  determined 
as  the  People  of  the  United  Kingdom  to  pro- 
secute a  just  cause  to  a  successful  end. 

The  Dominion  of  Canada,  the  Common- 
wealth of  Australia,  and  the  Dominion  of 
New  Zealand  have  placed  at  My  disposal 
their  naval  forces,  which  have  already 
rendered  good  service  for  the  Empire. 
Strong  Expeditionary  forces  are  being  pre- 
pared in  Canada,  in  Australia,  and  in  New 
Zealand  for  service  at  the  Front,  and  the 
Union  of  South  Africa  has  released  all  British 
Troops  and  has  undertaken  important  mili- 
tary responsibilities  the  discharge  of  which 
will  be  of  the  utmost  value  to  the  "Empire. 
Newfoundland  has  doubled  the  numbers 
of  its  branch  of  the  Royal  Naval  Reserve 
and  is  sending  a  body  of  men  to  take  part 
in  the  operations  at  the  Front.  From  the 
Dominion  and  Provincial  Governments  of 
Canada  large  and  welcome  gifts  of  supplies 
are  on  their  way  for  the  use  both  of  My 
Naval  and  Military  forces  and  for  the  relief 
of  the  distress  in  the  United  Kingdom  which 
must  inevitably  follow  in  the  wake  of  war. 
All  parts  of  My  Oversea  Dominions  have  thus 
demonstrated  in  the  most  unmistakable 
manner  the  fimdamental  unity  of  the  Empire 
amidst    all    its    diversity    of    situation    and 

circximstance. 

GEORGE  R.I. 

Even  more  striking  and  not  less  spontaneous 
were  the  expressions  of  passionate  loyalty  to  the 
Throne  and  Empire  which  came  from  India. 
Assurances  of  Indian  support  were  unanimously 
forthcoming,  and  as  early  as  Aiigust  6  The 
Times  Correspondent  in  Bombay  was  able  to 
announce  that  the  military  Princes  of  India 
had  placed  the  whole  of  their  resources  at  the 
disposal  of  the  Emperor.  Later  on  in  the 
Viceroy's  Coimcil  Lord  Hardinge,  speaking 
of  the  employment  of  the  Indian  Army  in 
the  War,  said  : — 

It  was,  moreover,  with  confidence  and 
pride  that  I  was  able  to  offer  to  his  Majesty 
the  first  and  largest  military  force  of  British 
and  Indian  troops  for  service  in  Europe  that 
has  ever  left  the  shores  of  India.  I  am  con- 
fident that  the  honour  of  this  land  and  of  the 
British  Empire  may  be  safely  entrusted  to 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR, 


173 


LORD   HARDINGE   OF   PENSHURST, 
Viceroy  of  India. 

[Elliott  &■  Fry. 

our  brave  soldiers,  and  that  they  will  acquit 
themselves   nobly   and    ever   maintain   their 
high    traditions    of    military    chivalry    and 
covirage.     To   the  people  of  India  I  would 
say  at  this  time,  let  us  display  to  the  world 
an  attitude  of  unity,  of  self-sacrifice,  and  of 
unswerving  confidence  under  all  circumstances 
in  the  justice  of  our  cause  and  in  the  assur- 
ance that  God  will  defend  the  right. 
A  summary  of  the  various  offers  of  service, 
money,  and  so  forth  made  by  the  rulers  of  the 
native   States  was  given   in  a  telegram  from 
the    Viceroy    dated    September    8,    which   was 
read  by  Lord  Crewe  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
and  by  Mr.   Charles  Roberts,  Under-Secretary 
of  State  for  India,  in  the  House  of  Commons 
on  September  9  : — 

Following  is  a  summary  of  offers  of  ser- 
vice, money,  &c.,  made  in  India  to  the 
Viceroy.  The  Rulers  of  the  Native  States 
in  India,  who  number  nearly  seven  hundred 
in  all,  have  with  one  accord  rallied  to  the 
defence  of  the  Empire  and  offered  their 
personal  services  and  the  resources  of 
their  States  for  the  war.  From  among 
the  many  Princes  and  Nobles  who  have 
volunteered  for  active  service,  the  Viceroy 
has  selected  the  Chiefs  of  Jodhpvir,  Bikaner, 
Kishangarh,  Rutlam,  Sachin,  Patiala,  Sir 
Pertab  Singh,  Regent  of  Jodhpur,  the  Heir 
Apparent  of  Bhopal,  and  a  brother  of  the 
Maharaja  of  Cooch  Behar,  together  with 
other*cadets  of  noble  families.     The  veteran 


> 


Sir  Pertab  would  not  be  denied  his  right  to 
serve  the  King-Emperor  in  spite  of  his 
seventy  years,  and  his  nephew,  the  Ma.haraja 
who  is  but  sixteen  years  old,  goes  with  him. 

All  these  have,  with  the  Commander- 
in-Chief's  approval,  already  joined  the 
Expeditionary  Forces.  The  Maharaja '  of 
Gwalior  and  the  Chiefs  of  Jaora  and  Dholpur 
together  with  the  Heir- Apparent  of  Palanpur 
were,  to  their  great  regret,  prevented  from 
leaving  their  States.  Twenty-seven  of  the 
larger  States  in  India  maintain  Imperial 
Service  Troops,  and  the  services  of  every 
corps  were  immediately  placed  at  the  dis- 
posal of  the  Government  of  India  on  the 
outbreak  of  war.  The  Viceroy  has  accepted 
from  twelve  States  contingents  of  cavalry, 
infantry,  sappers,  and  transport,  besides  a 
camel  corps  from  Bikaner,  and  most  of  them 
have  already  embarked.  As  particular  in- 
stances of  generosity  and  eager  loyalty  of 
the  CH^fs  the  following  may  be  quoted: — 
Various  Durbars  have  combined  together  to 
provide  a  hospital  ship  to  be  called  ''  The 
Loyalty  "  for  the  use  of  the  Expeditionary 
Forces.  The  Maharaja  of  Mysore  has  placed 
Rs.50  lakhs  at  the  disposal  of  the  Government 
of  India  for  expenditure  in  connexion  with  the 
Expeditionary  Force. 

The  Chief  of  Gwalior,  in  addition  to 
sharing  in  the  expenses  of  the  hospital  ship. 


THE  MARQUESS   OF  CREWE, 
Secretary  of  State  for  India. 

lEWotl  &■  Frv. 


174 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


THE  MAHARAJA  OF  MYSORE. 

[Sport  &  GtHtral. 

the  idea  of  which  was  originated  with  himself 
and  the  Begum  of  Bhopal,  has  offered  to 
place  large  svmas  of  money  at  the  disposal  of 
the  Government  of  India  and  to  pro- 
vide thousands  of  horses  a"  remounts. 
From  Loharu  in  the  Punjab  and  Las 
Bela  and  Kalat  in  Baluchistan  come  offers 
of  camels  with  drivers,  to  be  supplied 
and  maintained  by  the  Chiefs  and  Sardars. 
Several  chiefs  have  offered  to  raise  additional 
troops  for  military  service  should  they  be 
required,  and  donations  to  the  Indian  Relief 
Fund  have  poured,  in  from  all  States.  The 
Maharaja  of  Rewa  has  offered  his  troops, 
his  treasury,  and  even  his  private  jewelry 
for  the  service  of  the  King-Emperor.  In 
addition  to  contributions  to  the  Indian 
Fund  some  Chiefs — namely,  those  of  Kashmir, 
Biindi,  Orchha,  and  Gwalior  and  Tndore — 
have  also  given  large  sums  to  the  Prince  of 
Wales's  Fund. 

The  Maharaja  of  Kashmir,  not  content 
with  subscribing  himself  to  the  Indian  Fund, 
presided  at  a  meeting  of  20,000  people  held 
recently  at  Srinagar  and  dehvered  a  stirring 
speech,  in  response  to  which  large  subscrip- 
tiojis  were  collected. 


Maharaja  Holkar  offers,  free  of  charge,  all 
horses  in  his  State  Army  which  may  be 
suitable  for  Government  purposes.  Horses 
also  offered  by  Nizam's  Government,  by 
Jamnagar,  and  other  Bombay  States.  Every 
Chief  in  the  Bombay  Presidency  has  placed 
the  resources  of  \aa  State  at  the  disposal 
of  Government,  and  all  have  made  contribu- 
tions to  the  Relief  Fund. 

Loyal  messages  and  offers  also  received 
from  Mehtar  of  Chitral  and  tribes  of  Khyber 
Agency  as  well  as  Khyber  Rifles. 

Letters  have  been  received  from  the  most 
remote  States  in  India,  all  marked  by  deep 
sincerity  of  desire  to  render  some  assistance, 
however  humble,  to  the  Britifeh  Government 
in  its  hour  of  need. 

Last,  but  not  least,  from  beyond  the 
borders  of  India  have  been  received  generous 
offers  of  assistance  from  the  Nepal  Durbar  ; 
the  military  resources  of  the  State  have  been 
placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  British  Govern- 
ment, and  the  Prime  Minister  has  offered 
a  sum  of  Rs.3  lakhs  to  the  Viceroy  for  the 
purchase  of  machine  guns  or  field  equipment 
for  British  Giirkha  Regiments  proceeding 
overseas,  in  addition  to  large  donations  from 
his  private  purse  to  the  Prince  of  Wales's 
Fund  and  the  Imperial  Indian  Relief  Fund. 

To  the  4th  Gurkha  Rifles,  of  which  the 
Prime  Minister  is  honorary  Colonel,  the 
Prime  Minister  has  offered  Rs.  30,000  for  the 
purchase  of  machine  guns  in  the  event  of 
their  going  on  service.  The  Dalai  Lama 
of  Tibet  has  offered  1,000  Tibetan  troops 
for  service  under  the  British  Government. 
His  Holiness  also  states  that  Lamas  in- 
nimierable  throughout  length  and  breadth 
of  Tibet  are  offering  prayers  for  success  of 
British  Army  and  for  happiness  of  souls  of 
all  victims  of  war. 

The  same  spirit  has  prevailed  throughout 
British  India.  Htmdreds  of  telegrams  and 
letters  received  by  Viceroy  expressing  loyalty 
and  desire  to  serve  Government  either  in  the 
field  or  by  cooperation  in  India.  Many 
hundreds  also  received  by  local  administra- 
tions. They  come  from  commvinities  and 
associations,  religious,  political,  and  social, 
of  all  classes  and  creeds,  also  from  individuals 
offering  their  resources  or  asking  for  oppor- 
tunity to  prove  loyalty  by  personal  service. 
Following  may  be  mentioned  as  typical 
examples  : — 

The  All  India  Moslem  League,  the  Bengal 
Presidency  Moslem  League,  the  Moslem 
Association  of  Rangoon,  the  Trustees  of  the 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


175 


Aligarh  College,  the  Behar  Provincial  Moslem 
League  the  Central  National  Mahomedan 
Association  of  Calcutta,  the  Khoja  Com- 
mvinity,  and  other  followers  of  Aga  Khan, 
the  Punjab  Moslem  League,  Mahomedans  of 
Eastern  Bengal,  Citizens  of  Calcutta,  Madras, 
Rangoon,  and  many  other  cities,  Behar 
Landholders'  Association,  Madras  Provincial 
Congress,  Taluqdars  of  Oudh,  Punjab  Chiefs' 
Association,  L^nited  Provinces  Provincial 
Congress,  Hindus  of  the  Pvinjab  Chief  Khalsa 
Diwan  representing  orthodox  Sikhs,  Bohra 
Community  of  Bombay,  Parsee  Community  oi 
Bombay. 

Delhi  Medical  Association  offer  field 
hospital  that  was  sent  to  Turkey  during 
Balkan  War  ;  Bengalee  students  offer 
enthusiastic  services  for  an  ambulance  corps, 
and  there  were  many  other  offers  of  medical 
aid  ;  Zemnidars  of  Madras  have  offered  500 
horses,  and  among  other  practical  steps 
taken  to  assist  Government  may  be  noted 
the  holding  of  meetings  to  allay  panic,  keep 
down  prices,  and  maintain  public  confi- 
dence and  credit.  Generous  contributions 
have  poured  in  from  all  quarters  to  Imperial 
Indian  Relief  Fund. 
These  great  and  splendid   offers  of  service 

were  acknowledged  by  the  King-Emperor  in  the 

following  terms  : — 

To   the   Princes   and  Peoples  of   My 

Indian  Empire  : 

Among     the     many   incidents   that   have 

marked     the    unanimous     uprising     of     the 

populations    of    My    Empire    in    defence    of 

its    unity  and  integrity,  nothing  has  moved 


me  more  than  the  passionate  devotion  to 
My  Throne  expressed  both  by  My  Indian 
subjects,  and  by  the  Feudatory  Princes 
and  the  ruling  Chiefs  of  India,  and  their 
prodigal  offers  of  their  lives  and  their  re- 
sources in  the  cause  of  tfie  Realm.  Their 
one-voiced  demand  to  be  foremost  in  the 
conflict  has  touched  my  heart,  and  has  in- 
spired to  the  highest  issues  the  love  and 
devotion  which,  as  I  well  know,  have  ever 
linked  My  Indian  subjects  and  Myself. 
I  recall  to  mind  India's  gracious  message 
to  the  British  nation  of  good  will  and 
fellowship  which  greeted  my  return  in 
February,  1912,  after  the  solemn  cere- 
mony of  My  Coronation  Durbar  at  Delhi, 
and  I  find  in  this  hour  of  trial  a  full  harvest 
and  a  noble  fulfilment  of  the  assurance 
given  by  you  that  the  destinies  of  Great 
Britain  and  India  are  indissolubly  linked. — 

GEORGE  R.I. 
It  is  unnecessary  to  dwell  upon  the  tremend- 
ous significance  of  these  documents.  The 
British  Empire  went  to  war  for  jvistice,  mercy, 
and  righteousness,  knowing  that  those  great 
principles  of  human  government  were  not 
merely  endorsed  by  its  united  conscience  but 
that  in  India  not  less  than  elsewhere  they  had 
been  put  to  the  practical  proof  and  had  not 
been  found  wanting.  Indian  loyalty  owed  its 
existence  not  only  to  the  monarchic  instincts 
of  its  peoples  and  to  their  martial  pride,  but  to 
their  gratitude  for  the  benefits  of  British 
Government  and  to  their  determination  to 
uphold  at  all  costs  the  Empire  to  which  they 
were   so   deeply   indebted.    ' 


176 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


FIELD-MARSHAL    EARL    KITCHENER,   Secretary  of  State  for  War. 

{From  the  painting  by  Angele. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE    BRITISH   THEORY   OF   WAR. 


Advantage  of  Practical  Experience — Lord  Kitchener  on  the  Importance  of  Feeding 
Soldiers  and  of  Cover — Small  Armies  with  Long  Training — Individual  Efficiency — 
Quality  Eather  than  Quantity — India  as  a  Training  Ground — The  Wellington  Tradition 
— Crimean  War — Indian  Mutiny — Lord  Roberts  and  Lord  Wolseley — South  African  War 


WHILE  German  and,  to  a  large 
extent,  French  strategy  had  been 
based  mainly  on  tradition  and 
theory  controlled  by  peace 
manoeuvres,  the  British  strategy  was  the  out- 
come of  practical  experience  in  numerous  and 
various  theatres  of  war.  The  campaigns,  it  is 
true,  in  which  the  British  Army  had  been  tested 
were  against  barbaric  and  semi -civilized 
coloTired  races  or  against  the  half-organized 
nations  in  arms  of  the  Transvaal  Republic 
and  the  Orange  Free  State,  and  only  a  few 
living  Britons  {e.g..  Sir  Evelyn  Wood,  Lord 
Kitchener,  and  Sir  Ian  Hamilton)  had  taken 
part  in  or  observed  with  their  own  eyes 
wars  on  the  Continental  scale.  A  large  pro- 
portion of  the  British  troops,  however,  had 
been  under  the  fire  of  modern  weapons,  and  in 
the  South  African  War  very  many  officers  had 
learnt  what  their  men  could  and  could  not  do 
in  face  of  the  terrible  instruments  of  destruction 
created  by  science  during  the  latter  half  of 
the  19th  and  the  beginning  of  the  20th  century. 
Thus  Lord  Kitchener,  addressing  the  1st 
Punjab  Rifles  in  March,  1906,  remarked  as 
follows  : — 

You  must  not  get  into  the  way  of  thinking  that  men 
can  go  on  fighting  interminably.  Men  get  hungry, 
men  get  thirsty,  men  get  tired.  In  real  warfare, 
where  many  hours  of  hard  marching  and  fighting 
may  pass  before  you  achieve  success,  you  have  to  ask 
yourselves  at  the  critical  moment :  Can  I  tnist  my  men, 
with  gnawing  pains  of  hunger  in  their  stomachs,  with 
a  depressing  sense  of  having  suffered  casualties,  and 
with  fatigue  in  all  their  limbs  ;  can  I  trust  them  to 
press  upon  the  retreating  enemy  and  crush  him  ? 
And  therefore  I  say  to  you  officers— Look  after  your 
men's  stomachs.  These  field  days  of  two  or  three 
hours'  duration  do  not  bring  the  lesson  home  to  you 
with  sufficient  force.     Men  cannot  fight  well  unless 


they  are  fed  well,  and  men  cannot  fight  well  when  they 
are  tired.  I  have  more  than  once  on  active  service 
taken  the  ammunition  out  of  my  ammunition  carts 
and  loaded  up  the  carts  with  bully  beef.  .  .  . 
Gentlemen,  I  wish  to  add  a  word  about  the  behaviour 
of  your  men  in  the  field.  Colonel  Western,  without 
a  word  or  a  suggestion  from  me,  spontaneously  came 
up  and  said,  '"  I  think  the  men  are  taking  cover  very 
intelligently."  Cover,  as  you  know,  is  all-important 
in  modem  warfare,  and  soldiers  who  know  how  to 
take  advantage  of  every  possible  cover  on  the  battle- 
field have  learnt  one  of  their  greatest  and  most  valuable 
lessons.* 

Doubtless  the  German  leaders  would  have  ac 

quiesced  in  the  above  observations,  but  few  of 

them  had  had  the  facts  driven  into  their  souls 

on  the  battle-field.     Lord  Kitchener's  audience 

must  have  felt  that  they  were  in  the  presence  of 

an  artist  and  not  of  an  art -master  of  war.     Like 

the  Russian  and  Serbian,  the  British  generals 

had  made  war,  and,  as  Napoleon  said,     "  It  is 

necessary  to  have  made  war  for  a  long  time  to 

be  able  to  conceive  it." 

The  Russian  and  Serbian  generals    had   also 

handled   men   in   action,    but   they   had   been 

dealing  with  a  material  substantially  different 

from  that  with  which  the  British  officer  worked. 

The  Slav  soldiers  were  conscripts  ;   the  British 

were  volunteers  ;    the  former  had  had  a  short, 

the  latter  a  long  training.     The  British  officers 

alone  had  at  their  disposition  forces  similar    to 

the  small,  highly -trained,  professional  armies  of 

the  17th,  18th,  and  the  earlj'  19th  centuries. 


'This  lesson  had  been  thoroughly  learnt  by  the  British  troops. 
"  The  English,"  wrote  a  Gennan  oflRcer  to  his  parents  on  September 
17,  1914,  "  are  marvellously  trained  in  making  use  of  the  grovmd. 
One  never  sees  them,  and  one  is  constantly  under  fire."  Here  is  an 
extract  from  another  letter  found  on  a  German  oflBeer : — "  With 
the  English  troops  we  have  great  difiBculties.  They  have  a  queer 
way  of  causing  losses  to  the  enemy.  They  make  good  trenches  in 
which  they  wait  patiently.  They  carefully  measure  the  ranges 
for  their  rifle  fire,  and  they  then  open  a  truly  hellish  fire  on  the  un- 
suspecting cavalry.    This  was  the  reason  that  we  had  such  heavy 


177 


178 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


MAJOR-GENERAL     SIR    CHARLES 
FERGUSSON,  commanding  5th  Division. 

[//.  WalUr  Barnett. 

The  result  was  that  British  strategy  and 
tactics  differed  in  many  respects  from  Con- 
tinental.- Compared  with  other  European 
Armies,  the  British  corps  resembled  the  legions 
which  guarded  the  frontiers  of  the  Roman 
Empire  diiring  the  fii'st  two  centuries 
of  the  Christian  Era,  with  this  im- 
portant distinction,  that  the  army  of 
Augtistus  and  Trajan  was  recruited  mostly  in 
the  provinces,  whereas  the  bulk  of  the  British 
Army  was  composed  of  citizens  drawn  from  the 
British  Isles.  A  British  general  was  unable, 
as  Continental  generals  were,  immediately  to 
tap  an  immense  reserve  of  more  or  less  disci- 
plined soldiers  and  he  was  consequently 
obliged  to  husband  his  resources.  "  I  can 
spend  a  hundred  thousand  men  a  year,"  said 
Napoleon,  who  often  spent  more.  No  British 
general  before  the  Great  War  could  have  ven- 
tured to  talk  in  that  fashion.  The  British  aims 
had  perforce  been  to  inflict  a  maximum  while 
suffering  a  minimum  loss  in  war,  and  to  render 
the  individual  soldier  and  the  tactical  units 
superior  to  those  produced  under  a  universal 
military  service  system.  The  second  of  those 
aims  was  admirably  expressed  in  the  Infantry 
Training  manual  issued  by  the  General  Staff : — 

The  objects  in  view  in  developing  a  soldierly 
spirit  are  to  lielp  the  soldier  to  bear  fatigue,  privation, 
and    danger    cheerfully ;      to    imbue    him    with    a 


sense  of  honour ;  to  give  him  confidence  in  his 
superiors  and  comrades  ;  to  increase  his  powers  of 
initiative,  of  self-confidence,  and  of  self-restraint ; 
to  train  him  to  obey  orders,  or  to  act  in  the  absence 
of  orders  for  the  advantage  of  his  regiment  under  all 
conditions  ;  to  produce  such  a  high  degree  of  courage 
and  disregard  of  self  that  in  the  stress  of  battle  he 
will  use  his  brains  and  his  weapons  coolly  and  to  the 
best  advantaige  ;  to  impress  upon  him  that,  so  long  as 
he  is  physically  capable  of  fighting,  surrender  to  the 
enemy  is  a  disgraceful  act  ;  and,  finally,  to  teach  him 
how  to  act  in  combination  with  his  comrades  in  order 
to  defeat  the  enemy. 

Like  Alexander,  Hannibal,  Marius,  Sulla, 
Caesar  in  Ancient,  and  like  Gustavus  Adolphus, 
Turenne,  Frederick  the  Great,  Lee,  and  Stone- 
wall Jackson  in  Modem  times,  the  great  cap- 
tains of  the  British  nation  relied  on  quahty 
rather  than  quantity.  They  did  not  believe 
that  God  was  on  the  side  of  the  big  battalions, 
and  it  was  significant  that  the  campaign  of 
Napoleon  most  admired  by  Wellington  was  that 
of  1814,  when  the  French  Emperor  with  a  small 
army,  by  his  manoeuvring  and  through  the 
superior  merits  of  his  troops,  held  at  bay  for 
many  weeks  the  enormous  hosts  of  the  AlUes 
and  inflicted  a  crushing  defeat  on  Bliicher 
between  the  Marne  and  the  Seine.  The 
business  of  a  British  commander  was  to  fight 
with  every  natural  and  artificial  advantage  on 
his  side.  In  other  words,  he  trusted  by  his 
art,  and  the  art  of  his  men,  to  overcome  the 
hordes  of  a  modem   Attila.     British   generals. 


MAJOR-GENERAL    SNOW, 

commanding  4th  Division. 

[EllioU  Gr  Fry, 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


179 


contrary  to  the  fond  belief  of  the  Kaiser  and  his 
advisers,  were  thoroughly  up  to  date.  They 
had  studied  with  p  articular  attention  the  Riisso- 
Japanese  and  Balkan  Wars,  and  the  Kaiser 
was  to  find  that  the  British  Army,  though 
"  little,"  was  very  far  from  being  "  con- 
temptible." 

The  British  practice  of  pitting  small  armies 
against  large  continental  armies  dated  from 
the  Hundred  Years  War.  During  the  struggle 
with  Louis  XIV.,  the  next  occasion  on  which 
we  exerted  a  decisive  influence  on  the  Continent, 
the  British  contingent  and  Marlborough  were 
perhaps  the  chief  cause  of  the  victory  gained 
by  the  Allies  over  the  French  monarch.  But 
at  the  opening  of  the  French  Revolutionary 
Wars  our  troops,  whose  prestige  had  been 
lowered  in  the  American  War  of  Independence, 
did  not  at  the  outset  distinguish  themselves. 
In  his  first  encounter  with  the  French  Wellington 
had  to  help  to  conduct  a  retreat  before  them. 
Fortunately  the  efforts  of  Abercrombie,  Moore, 
and  others  to  raise  the  standard  of  efficiency 
in  our  Army  were  successful,  and  at  the  battles 
of  Alexandria  and  Maida  it  was  clearly 
demonstrated  that  the  British  could  hold  their 
own  against  forces  trained  by  Napoleon  him- 
self or  under  his  direction.  Fortunately, 
too,  in  India  we  had  acqiiired  a  unique 
training  ground  for  our  soldiers.  En- 
camped   among    &,    vast     and     then     hostile 


GENERAL  SIR  HENRY  HILDYARD, 
late  Commander-ia- Chief  in  South  Africa. 


MAJOR-GENERAL    SIR    WILLIAM 
ROBERTSON,  Director  of  Military  Training, 

[From  a  painting  by  J.  St.  Heher  Lander. 

population  the  British  garrison  had  to  struggle 
fiercely  for  its  existence,  and  in  the  struggle 
characters  as  daring  and  resourceful  as  any 
produced  by  the  French  Revolution  were  de- 
veloped. One  of  them,  Wellington,  was  des- 
tined to  destroy  the  reputation  for  invincibility 
gained  by  the  Marshals  of  Napoleon.  While 
the  Prussians  (who,  be  it  remembered,  rose 
against  Napoleon  only  when  he  had  lost  his 
Grande  Armee  in  Russia)  were  cowering  before 
Davout,  French  leaders  whose  mere  names 
struck  terror  throughout  Germany  and  Austria- 
Hungary  were  being  worsted  by  Wellington. 
The  strategy  and  tactics  of  Wellington  in 
Portugal,  Spain,  and  the  South  of  France 
were,  in  1914,  still  sources  of  inspiration  to 
British  soldiers. 

The  infantry  of  Wellington,  as  Marbot 
points  out,  shot  better  than  the  French,  and  a 
bayonet  charge  by  them  was  almost  irresistible. 
Wellington  in  India  had  predicted  that  against 
British  infantry  the  tactics  of  Napoleon  would 
be  unavailing.  If  on  the  defensive,  Welling- 
ton was  accustomed  to  await  the  attack  of  the 
French  with  his  infemtry  drawn  up  in  lines  and 
under  cover.  When  the  enemy's  colunms 
had  been  shattered  by  musketry  and  artillery 
fire  they  were  attacked  with  the  bayonet. 
But  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  for  every 
defensive  battle  the  Iron  Duke  fought  five  on 
the  offensive,  and  the  masterly  manoeuvres  by 
which  from  1813  onwards  he  drove  the  French 
from  Spain  belong  purely  to  this  class. 

As  a  strategist,  Wellington  was  equally 
remarkable.    His  march  to  and  crossing  of 


180 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


VICKERS'    LATEST    QUICK-FIRER. 
Firing    600    roxinds    per    minute. 


[By  courtesy  of  Viclttrs,  Ltd. 


the  Douro  in  front  of  Soult,  whom  Napoleon 
called  "  the  first  manoeuverer  of  Europe,"  is 
a  model  of  its  kind.  By  constructing  the  lines 
of  Torres  Vedras  and  devastating  Portugal  he 
ensured  the  failure  of  Massena's  invasion  in 
1810.  Napoleon,  who  earlier  had  sneered  at 
Wellington  as  a  "  Sepoy  General,"  expressed 
to  Foy  his  admiration  of  the  methods  employed 
by  the  British  generahssimo  on  that  occasion. 
Wellington's  sudden  pounces  upon  and  storm- 
ings  of  Ciudad  Rodrigo  and  Badajos  in  1812 
were  masterly.  His  advemce  in  1813  against 
the  French  hnes  of  communication,  and  the 
skill  with  which,  availing  himself  of  the  com- 
mand of  the  sea,  he  shifted  his  base  from 
Lisbon  to  Santander,  was  as  brilliant  a  feat 
as  Napoleon's  campaign  of  Marengo.  In  the 
Waterloo  campaign  he  had  few  of  his  Peninsular 
veterans  with  him,  and  the  majority  of  his  troops 
were  Belgian,  Dutch,  and  German  soldiers. 
According  to  Lord  Roberts,  Wellington  made  no 
aaistake  in  1815,  and,  had  the  Prussian  army 
been  also  placed  under  his  command,  it  is 
improbable  that  the  French  Emperor  would 
have  succeeded  in  winning,  as  he  did,  a  battle 
(that  of  Ligny)  after  he  had  crossed  the  Sambre. 
The  value  set  upon  Wellington  by  contemporary 
Prussians  may  be  gathered  from  the  fact  that, 
according  to  report,  years  later,  when  war 
between  France  and  Prussia  seemed  imminent, 
the  Prussian  Government  offered  the  command 
of  its  forces  to  the  Iron  Dvike. 

Between     Waterloo     and     1914     a     British 
army    appeared    only    once    on    the    Conti- 


nent. In  the  interval  between  Waterloo 
and  the  Crimean  War  a  wave  of  coromer- 
cial  prosperity  had  swept  over  the  country. 
The  warning  of  Wellington  that  steamboats 
had  altered  the  conditions  of  warfare  and  that 
our  islands  might  be  invaded  fell  upon  deaf  ea  s. 
Like  Lord  Roberts  in  the  years  preceding  the 
Great  War,  the  Duke  was  pronounced  by 
demagogues  to  be  in  his  dotage.  Our  Army  was 
quite  im.prepared  when  the  Crimean  War  broke 
out,  and  though  the  British  infantry  at  the 
Alma  and  Inkerman  and  the  British  cavalry 
in  the  charges  of  the  Heavy  and  Light  Brigades 
exhibited  the  same  stubbornness,  energy,  and 
courage  they  had  shown  in  the  Peninsula  and 
at  Waterloo,  the  reputation  of  the  British 
Army  was  not  increased.  A  year  after  the  con- 
clusion of  peace  the  Indian  Mutiny  broke  out, 
and  the  British  soldier,  divorced  from  a  civilian- 
encumbered  War  Office,  astonished  the  world 
by  his  sublime  courage  and  resourcefulness. 
The  officers  and  men  who  fought  at  Mons  and  on 
the  Mame  remembered  the  capture  of  Delhi 
and  the  raising  of  the  siege  of  Lucknow,  jusf 
as  the  Nicholsons,  Havelocks,  Outrams,  and 
Hodsons  remembered  Assaye,  Albuera,  Quatre 
Bras,  and  Waterloo. 

In  the  Indian  Mutiny  two  soldiers  who  were 
to  keep  the  Army  abreast  of  the  times  cams  to 
the  front — Lord  Roberts  and  Lord  Wolseley. 
The  latter  had  distinguished  himself  in  the 
Crimea.  From  the  respect  in  which  he  was 
held  by  officers  of  unquestionable  abihty, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  was  one  of  the 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


181 


foremost  captains  of  the  age.  Like  Havelock, 
he  had  studied  profoundly  the  campaigns  of 
Napoleon,  the  lessons  taught  by  Lee,  Jackson, 
and  Grant  in  the  North  and  South  War,  by 
Moltke  in  the  Sadowa  and  the  Gravelotte- 
Sedan  campaigns  were  not  lost  on  him.  It  is 
interesting  to  note  that,  while  Moltke  cast  a 
disdainful  eye  on  the  deeds  of  the  American 
generals,  Lord  Wolseley  (as  also  Colonel 
Henderson)  examined  with  sympathetic  atten- 
tion their  achievements.  Lee,  in  Lord  Wolseley's 
view,  was  greater  than,  Jackson  (according 
to  Colonel  Henderson)  was  as  great  as, 
Napoleon.  Such  obiter  dicta  might  smack  of 
exaggeration,  but  they  were  characteristic 
of  the  independent  attitude  of  British  military 
men.  Napoleon  was  admired  in  Great  Britain, 
but  he  was  not  worshipped  as  he  was  in  Prussia. 
The  blind  admiration  felt  for  Napoleon  by 
Imperial  Germany  would  not  have  been 
tolerated  in  our  military  circles.  "  You  think 
that  Wellington  is  a  great  general  because  he 
defeated  you,"  said  Napoteon,  for  the  purpose 
of  heartening  his  men,  to  Soul  ton  the  morning 
of  Waterloo.  The  Prussians,  because  they  had 
been  so  often  routed  by  Napoleon,  had  deified 
him.  It  was  Lord  Wolseley  who  superintended 
the  metamorphosis  of  the  British  from  a  Long 
into  a,  comparatively.  Short  Service  Army, 
from  one  led  by  men  who  had  purchased  their 
commissions  into  one  with  officers  selected  by 
competitive  examination. 

We     turn     now     to     Lord    Roberts,  whose 


brilliant  march  to  Candahar  brought  him 
prominently  before  the  public.  No  one  had 
done  more  than  he  to  convert  the  private  and  non- 
commissioned officer  into  the  chivalrous,  clean- 
living,  and  intelligent  soldier  who  was  to  win 
the  admiration  and  affection  of  the  French 
Allies.  As  a  strategist  and  tactician,  Lord 
Roberts  had  been  always  alertly  appreciative 
of  new  factors  in  warfare.  His  orders  issued, 
and  his  speeches  before  the  Boer  War  show 
that  he  acciirately  calculated  the  effect  of 
the  modem  artillery,  of  smokeless  powder, 
and  of  repeating  rifles  on  the  battle-field. 
After  the  battle  of  Colenso  he  was  dispatched 
with  Lord  Kitchener  to  South  Africa.  He  took 
over  the  command  of  a  half-dispirited  army 
which  had  not  been  trained  to  meet  mounted 
infantry  who  were  also  marksmen.  The 
Spectator,  a  representative  organ  of  British 
opinion,  was  then  hinting  that  the  war  might 
last  20  years.  Lords  Roberts  and  Kitchener 
landed  at  Cape  Town  on  January  10,  1900, 
and  by  February  18  Cronje  had  been  out- 
manoeuvred and  siirrounded  at  Paardeberg. 
The  svirrender  of  Cronje  a  few  days  later  led 
to  the  raising  of  the  siege  of  Ladysmith  and 
was  followed  by  the  occupation  of  Bloemfontein 
and  Pretoria.  Seldom  in  history  has  the 
arrival  of  two  men  on  a  theatre  of  war  wrought 
a  transformation  so  sudden.  One  may  be  per- 
mitted to  wonder  what  would  have  happened 
if  Von  der  Goltz  and  the  younger  Moltke  had 
been  set   the   same   problem  !     Lords   Roberts 


A  VICKERS  75  M.M.  GUN. 


{yicktrs,  LimiUd. 


182 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


and  Kitchener  had  not  been  deputed  to  prepare 
(or  the  campaign,  and,  until  the  Boer  War,  if 
we  except  the  skimaishes  of  Laing's  Nek  and 
Majuba,  the  British  Army  had  had  no  experi- 
ence of  fighting  against  white  men  armed  with 
modem  artillery  and  rifles.  Lord  Roberts's 
bold  march  from  the  Modder  River  to  Bloem- 
fontein  and  the  turning  movements  by  which 
he  subsequently  drove  the  Boers  from  their 
kopjes  decided  the  struggle.  After  his  return 
to  England  he  had  striven  successfully  to 
impress  on  the  Army  the  paramount  importance 
of  accurate  shooting,  unsuccessfully  to  rouse  the 
nation  to  a  sense  of  the  German  Peril. 

Among  the  other  officers  who,  with  Lord 
Wolseley  and  Lord  Roberts,  prepared  the  British 
Army  for  a  European  war  may  be  mentioned 
Sir  Evelyn  Wood  (also  the  first  British  Sirdar 
of    the    Egyptian    Army),  General    Sir    Henry 


Hildyard  (first  Commandant  of  the  Staff 
College  and  afterwards  Commander-in-Chiei 
in  South  Africa),  Sir  Edward  Hamley  (the  author 
of  an  original  text  book  on  the  Art  of  War), 
Colonel  Henderson  (also  a  Commandant 
of  the  Staff  College),  and  Colonel  Reping- 
ton.  Standing  entirely  in  a  class  by 
himself  was  "  Chinese  "  Gordon,  a  Nelson  on 
land.  If,  as  Napoleon  asserted,  the  moral  are 
to  the  material  factors  in  war  as  three  to  one, 
Gordon's  services  to  his  country  cannot  be 
overrated.  The  avenger  of  Gordon  was  Lord 
Kitchener,  whose  direct  and  indirect  influence 
on  the  Army  which  fought  in  the  Great  War, 
was  of  the  most  decisive  kind.  He  was  not 
permitted  by  the  politicians  to  superintend 
the  preparations  for  it. 

In   our   next   chapter  we  shall  give  a  brief 
biography  of  this  extraordinary  man. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


THE  FRENCH  ARMY. 


The  French  Army  after  Waterloo  —  Causes  that  Contributed  to  its  Decay — Social  — 
Legislative  —  Political. —  Military  —  The  Regeneration — Laws  of  1872  and  1889 — Tttth 
Loi  DE  DEUX  ANs  1905  —  Law  OF  1913  —  France's  Last  Card  —  Numbers  and  Categories  of 
French  Army  at  Outbreak  of  War  —  Distribution  in  Time  of  Peace  —  Mobilization  — 
Employment  of  Reserve  Formations  —  War  Organization  of  French  Army  —  Training  — 
The  New  School — ^Minor  Tactics — ^Infantry — ^Artillery  —  Cavalry  —  The  Officers  —  Staff 
— Literature  —  Invention  —  The  Higher  Command — Decrees  of  1911 — Character  of  the 
French  Government — Prognostications  Unjustified — French  Unity — General  Plan  of 
Campaign — The  Defensive  Phase  —  Difficulties  of  Modern  Strategic  Defensive  —  Front 
of  German  Concentration  and  Lines  of  Attack — Lorraine  and  Belgium. 


w 


'  HEN  the  successes  and  failures  of 
the  French  Republic  during  the 
past  five  and  thirty  years  are 
placed  on  record  by  a  competent 
historian,  not  the  least  merit  which  will  justly 
be  claimed  for  the  Republican  regime  wiU  be 
that  it  restored  the  military  power  of  France 
and  established  a  sense  of  security  unknown  to 
any  previous  generation,  or  any  former  rule," 
So  wrote  The  Time^  Military  Correspondent  in 
March,  1906,  a  year  after  the  "  Loide  deux  ans  " 
had  registered  the  final  triumph  of  the  principle 
of  national  service.  By  way  of  illustration  of 
the  justice  of  this  judgment  we  propose  to 
recall  the  general  causes  which  led  to  the 
failure  in  1870,  and  then  to  enumerate  rapidly 
the  principal  phases  through  which  the  Army 
had  passed  from  that  fatal  year  down  to  the 
moment  when  it  again  entered  the  field. 

The  catastrophe  of  1870  is  attributable  not 
so  much  to  the  merely  technical  inferiority  of 
the  French  armies  and  their  generals,  as  to 
causes  which  had  been  operative  during  the 
whole  of  the  half  century  which  followed 
Waterloo,  to  cankers  which  had  eaten  deeply 
into  the  life  and  had  perverted  the  vision  of 
the  nation  itself.  Napoleon  I.  left  many 
legacies  to  France — some  good,  some  bad ; 
but  none  more  ruinous  than  that  loathing  of 
the  idea  of  national  .service  which  the  long  and 


appalling  orgy  of  his  wars  had  implanted  in 
the  French  mind.  The  splendid  energy  of  1793 
was  dead ;  the  population  was  physically 
and  morally  exhausted ;  the  ruthless  spend- 
thrift, whose  superhimaein  powers  of  will  and 
intellect  had  alone  made  his  system  possible, 
was  gone.  The  result  was  an  inevitable  and 
violent  reaction,  which  his  weak  and  nerveless 
successors  were  powerless  to  control.  Whereas 
to  Prussia  military  service  appeared  as  the 
instrument  which  had  helped  to  restore  her 
independence  and  her  national  existence,  for 
France  it  was  associated  with  unbridled  and 
wasteful  aggression  indulged  at  the  cost  of 
unceasing  and  universal  misery  and  ending 
in  gigantic  disasters. 

Nor  was  it  this  feeling  alone  that  was  re- 
sponsible for  the  collapse  of  1870.  The  ten- 
dencies of  the  time  were  largely  accountable. 
Men  saw  in  the  alleviation  of  the  burden 
of  military  service  the  logical  consequence  of 
the  prevailing  political  and  social  dogmeis.  The 
pacificist  preached  the  brotherhood  of  man,  and 
saw  in  the  railway,  not  a  fresh  and  powerful 
instrument  in  the  hands  of  the  general, 
but  a  new  avenue  of  intercouse  between  the 
nations.  Economists  preached  the  wasteful- 
ness of  war  and  the  advantages  of  material 
prosperity.  "  Get  rich,"  was  the  advice 
of    one    of     the     most     famous     of    French 


183 


184 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GENERAL    JOFFRE. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


185 


GENERALS    JOFFRE,    CASTELNAU    (Chief  of  Staff),    and    PAU. 


statesmen.  Politicians  harped  on  the  necessity 
of  retrenchment.  Demagogues  protested 
against  the  sacrifice  of  the  people  to  the  ambi- 
tions of  princes.  The  individual  was  exalted 
at  the  expense  of  the  State.  Luxury  and  in- 
difference grew  apace,  and  with  these  grew 
selfishness.  The  consequence  was  that  when  at 
last  France  foimd  herself  at  handgrips  with 
a  civilization  in  many  ways  less  generous  and 
less  enlightened  but  of  harder  fibre  than  her 
own,  she  was  morally  and  nationally,  as  well 
as  technically,  unprepared. 

It  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  French 
soldier  did  not  take  himself  very  seriously  in 
such  an  atmosphere  ;  a  high  standard  of  effi- 
ciency is  scarcely  possible  for  an  army  when 
the  nation  it  is  intended  to  defend  is  disposed 
to  regard  it  as  a  relic  of  barbarism.  The  French 
Army  lived  on  its  past ;  its  victories  in 
the  Crimea  and  in  Italy,  so  far  from  teaching 
it  the  necessity  of  studying  modern  conditions, 
had  only  confirmed  its  belief  in  its  own  invin- 
cibility. The  more  serious-minded  of  its 
officers  were  ridiculed  as  "  officer-professors," 
the  rest  were  thoroughly  well  satisfied  and 
generally  lazy.  Worst  of  all,  it  had  for  a  long 
time  ceased  to  be  a  really  national  body.  The 
rage  for  retrenchment  and  the  hatred  of  per- 
sonal service  had  resulted  in  a  series  of  measiires 
which  had  gradually  deprived  it  of  its  best 


elements  and  had  tended  to  degrade  the  military 
profession  in  the  eyes  of  the  people. 

After  the  fall  of  Napoleon  the  system  had 
been,  in  theory  at  least,  voluntary.  The  hated 
word  "  conscription  "  was  banned  ;  but  when 
volunteering  failed  to  produce  the  requisite 
nimiber  of  men  the  Government  was  allowed 
to  complete  the  necessary  annual  contingent 
by  men  chosen  by  lot,  and  denominated  appeles. 
The  supply  of  volunteers  was  so  small  that  the 
appeles  soon  came  to  constitute  by  far  the 
larger  portion  of  the  recruits ;  the  system  in 
fact  developed  into  a  sort  of  limited  conscrip- 
tion. This  plan  was  thoroughly  unsatisfac- 
tory. Whatever  value  it  possessed  was  mini- 
mized by  all  sorts  of  limiting  provisions.  In 
the  first  place  exemptions,  often  quite  unjusti- 
fiable, were  granted ;  and  these,  by  favour- 
ing the  men  of  a  higher  social  scale  and  members 
of  the  learned  professions,  tended  to  remove 
from  the  Army  the  more  intelligent  classes  of 
the  population.  In  the  second  the  period  of 
service  was  rendered  largely  illusory  by  the 
grant  of  extensive  furloughs  to  the  men  in 
the  ranks,  and  by  the  creation  of  a  second  class 
in  the  annual  contingent  which  was  allowed 
to  remain  at  home  without  training  unless 
the  Minister  of  War  thought  fit  to  call  it  up. 
After  1832  the  fixing  of  the  numbers  of  the 
contingent  was  left  to  the  Chambers,  and,  as 


186 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE  [  WAR, 


M.    ETIENNE, 
a  former  Minister  of  War. 

iRichaird  Stanley  &  Co. 

economy  was  preached  in  and  out  of  season, 
this  second  class  was  practically  never  trained 
at  all.  The  same  vicious  principle  reappeared 
in  the  provisions  for  the  "  tirage  au  sort " 
embodied  in  the  law  of  1872,  and  was  not 
finally  removed  till  1889.  Last  and 
worst  of  all,  the  law  of  1818  had 
introduced  the  fatal  principle  of  remplace- 
ment  or  substitution,  by  which  an  appele 
was  allowed  to  find  a  substitute  to  take  his  place 
on  payment  of  a  sum  of  money.  It  was  in- 
evitable that  the  well-to-do  classes  would  take 
advantage  of  this  ;  and,  as  a  result,  the  bulk  of 
those  who  could  afford  it  evaded  their  national 
obligations.  The  substitutes  naturally  be- 
longed to  the  poorer  and  less-educated  sections 
of  the  population,  some  to  the  very  lowest. 
Agences  de  remplacement,  known  as  "  Marchands 
dPHommes"  arose  for  the  purpose  of  exploiting 
the  increasing  popularity  of  substitution  ;  and 
the  fact  that  in  some  cases  the  substitute  was 
better  fitted  to  be  a  soldier  than  the  man  whose 
place  he  took  did  not  prevent  the  demoraliza- 
tion attendant  on  a  system  which  fostered 
unpatriotic  selfishness.  The  nation  was  de- 
graded by  this  avoidance  of  its  duties ;  the 
Army  was  degraded  by  the  lowering  of  the 
standard  of  its  personnel.  Ab  the  century 
advanced  substitution  became  more  and  more 
common ;    in  the  contingent  of  1869  out  of  a 


total  of  75,000  men  there  were  no  less  than 
42,000  substitutes. 

Yet  another  downward  step  was  taken  in 
1855,  when  in  order  to  lighten  the  "  blood-tax  " 
it  was  enacted  that  men  should  be  allowed  to 
re-engage,  the  inducement  to  do  so  being  a 
premium  paid  by  the  person  whose  place  the 
re-engaged  man  was  to  take  into  the  Govern- 
ment Chest.  The  results  were  that  all  re- 
sponsibility of  the  original  appele  for  his  rem- 
plaqant  ceased  ;  that  the  idea  of  personal 
service,  in  one  form  or  the  other,  was  finally 
lost  ;  that  the  Government  now  dealt  directly 
with  the  Agences  de  remplacement  and  shared 
with  them  the  odium  attaching  to  their  business ; 
and  that  the  re-engaged  men  who  served  for 
the  sake  of  the  money  remained  in  the  Army 
long  after  they  were  unfit  for  duty,  and  so  pre- 
vented younger  men  from  taking  their  places. 

It  is  not  necessary  here  to  refer  in  detail  to 
the  well-intended  but  imrealized  reforms 
of  Napoleon  III.  Six  weeks  after  Koniggratz 
he  announced  his  intention  of  re-organizing 
the  Army,  and  a  high  commission  of  Mim'sters 
and  soldiers  was  constituted  and  sat  at  Com- 
piegne.  It  was  determined  that  the  numbers 
of  the  Army  must  be  increased,  and  the  mili- 
tary members  asked  for  1,000,000  men,  to  be 
divided  into  the  now  familiar  sections  of  field 
army,  reserve,  and  territorial  army.     But  the 


M.   MILLERAND, 
the  French  Minister  of  War. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR 


187 


plan  was  objected  to  by  the  politicians  as 
likely  to  arouse  resistance  in  the  country, 
especially  in  view  of  the  fact  that  Europe  was 
at  peace  and  that  the  Exhibition  of  1867  was 
In  close  prospect.  The  result  was  that  the 
original  scheme  was  mutilated,  and  what 
remained  was  still  incomplete  when  Marshal 
Niel,  one  of  the  few  Frenchmen  of  real  energy 
and  insight  then  in  authority,  died.  The 
great  feature  of  the  plan,  the  organization  of  the 
Garde  Mobile,  which  was  to  be  a  sort  of  second 
line  army,  was  never  carried  out.  The  re-engage- 
ment system  (known  as  "  exoneration  ")  was 
abolished,  although  its  baneful  effects  were  still 
felt  in  1870.  Lastly,  the  period  of  colour 
service  was  shortened,  and  the  formation  of  a 
reserve  was  begun  ;  but  before  the  full  benefits 
of  this  measure  could  be  felt  the  war  of  1870 
broke  out.  It  found  the  discipline  of  the  rank 
and  file  weakened  by  extended  furloughs ; 
the  officers  lazy  and  lacking  in  authority  and 
without  the  confidence  of  their  men ;  the 
generals  for  the  most  part  ignorant  of  the 
higher  branches  of  their  profession ;  a  staff 
unpractised  in  the  handling  of  troops  and 
consisting  either  of  aides-de-camp  or  clerks. 
When  we  add  to  this  that  the  French  Army 
was  heavily  outnumbered  and  constantly  out- 
manoeuvred, that  none  of  its  arms  knew  their 
proper  work,  and  that  the  arrangements  for 
supply  and  mobilization  were  lamentably 
deficient,  the  wonder  is  not  that  they  were 
beaten,  but  that  they  managed  to  put  up  so 
gallant  a  fight.  Whatever  else  the '.war  proved, 
it  certainly  failed  to  demonstrate  the  superiority 
of  the  individual  Priissian  over  the  individual 
French  soldier. 

The  fearful  lesson  of  1870  recalled  the  French 
nation  to  its  senses.  In  July,  1872,  was  passed 
the  first  of  the  great  laws  which  have  con- 
tributed to  place  the  defences  of  the  coiintry 
on  a  worthy  footing.  Substitution  was 
abolished  and  the  principle  of  universal  com- 
pulsory service  was  reintroduced,  the  period 
of  service  with  the  colours  being  five  years, 
followed  by  four  in  the  Reserve,  five  in  the 
Territorial  Army,  and  six  in  the  Territorial 
Reserve.  But  the  application  of  the  prin- 
ciple was  still  not  absolute ;  the  annual  con- 
tingent was  divided  by  lot  into  two  portions, 
and  in  time  of  peace  one  of  them  was  let  off 
with  only  one  year  of  service  in  the  Active 
Army.  The  previous  exemptions  of  whole  classes, 
such  as  bread-winners,  teachers,  and  so  forth, 
were  still  allowed  in  time  of  peace ;  and  con- 
ditional engagements  for  one  year  only  were 
permitted  to  students  and  apprentices.  It 
was   hoped    by   this   arrangement   to   combine 


an  army  of  veterans  with  a  really  numerous 
and  truly  National  Army  ;  indeed,  in  some  of 
its  features  it  was  a  realization,  on  a  far  larger 
scale,  of  the  principles  which  had  underlain 
the  scheme  of  Marshal  Niel.  The  measure 
was  very  far  from  commanding  general  approba- 
tion. Its  acceptance  was  mainly  due  to  Thiers, 
who  was  strongly  convinced  that  a  short- 
service  army  covdd  never  be  efficient.  Gteneral 
Trochu  was  in  favour  of  a  three-year  system ; 
and  there  was  a  strong  minority  who  were 
wholly  opposed  to  the  idea  of  a  National  Army, 
and  were  in  favour  of  the  retention  of  the 
principle  of  substitution.  After-developments 
proved  the  General  to  have  been  right.  The 
law  of  1872,  though  a  great  advance  on  its 
predecessors,  showed  grave  defects.  The 
"  tirage  du  sort,"  which  condemned  one  half 
of  the  contingent  to  five  years  service  and  allowed 
the  other  to  escape  with  12  months,  was  felt  to  be 
wholly  inequitable  ;  and  strong  objection  was 
also  taken  to  the  "volontariat  conditionnel," 
a  provision  under  which  any  man  could  escape 
with  a  year's  service  by  paying  l,500f.  So 
many  cotild  afford  this  siun  that  the  numbers  of 
the  fully-trained  men  were  seriously  reduced. 
Both  these  provisions  were  abolished  in  1889, 
when  a  three-year  system  was  made  obliga- 
tory on  all,  and  service  in  the  Reserve  was  raised 
to  seven,  in  the  Territorial  Army  to  six,  and 
in  the  Territorial  Reserve  to  nine  years  respec- 
tively. It  was  anticipated  that  this  measure 
would  ultimately  raise  the  total  number  of 
trained  men  from  two  to  three  millions. 

But  in  the  years  which  followed  a  factor, 
which  far  transcended  in  importance  these 
internal  arrangements,  began  to  press  more 
and  more  heavily  upon  France.  This  was  the 
alteration  of  the  balance  of  population  in 
favoitr  of  Germany,  and  with  it  a  growing 
disparity  in  the  peace-effectives  of  the  armies, 
and  consequently  in  the  capacity  for  expansion 
in  time  of  war.  Other  things  being  equal,  the 
larger  the  peace  effectives  the  more  numerous  is 
the  annual  contingent  which  can  be  trained,  and 
the  larger  become  the  accumulated  reserves. 
As  late  as  1893  the  peace  effectives  of  France 
and  Germany  were  practically  equal,  453,000 
to  457,000  ;  but  from  1899  onwards  the  equi- 
poise was  lost  and  in  1905  the  figures  were 
stated  to  be  109,000  in  Germany's  favour. 
The  means  of  neutralizing  this  inferiority,  which 
was  the  result  of  natviral  causes  and  beyond 
the  reach  of  legislation,  was  the  principal 
preoccupation  of  French  statesmen  and  soldiers 
in  the  years  preceding  the  Great  War.  The 
Russian  Alliance,  however  valuable  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  general  position  of  France 


188 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GENERAL    PAU. 


in  Europe,  was  not  by  itself  sufficient  to  redress 
the  balance,  because  the  slowness  of  the  Rus- 
siaji  concentration  made  it  possible  for  Germany 
to  attack  France  before  her  ally  was  ready. 
It  was  therefore  decided  to  carry  stiU  further 
the  principle  of  universal  service  and,  by 
imposing  on  her  people  a  heavier  proportionate 
demand  than  Germany  with  her  larger  popula- 
tion found  it  necessary  to  make,  to  restore 
as  far  as  possible  the  numerical  equality  of  the 
two  armies.  This  was  the  object  of  the  "  Loi 
de  deux  ans,"  which  was  passed  in  March,  1905, 
and  came  into  opyeration  a  year  later.  It  was 
intended  to  develop  to  its  utmost  limit  the 
recruiting  capacity  of  the  nation.  The  term 
of  service  with  the  coloiirs  was  reduced  to  two 
years,  but  service  in  the  Army  Reserve  was 
increased  to  11,  to  be  followed  by  six  years  in 
the  Territorial  Army,  and  six  in  the  Territorial 
Reserve.  Thus  every  Frenchman  from  the 
age  of  20  to  45  became  liable  for  service.  No 
exemptions,  except  on  grounds  of  physical  un- 
fitness, were  granted,  although  certain  modifi- 
cations of  a  reasonable  character  were  intro- 
duced, and  the  hardships  inflicted  on  separate 
families  were  diminished  by  doles.  It  was 
calculated  that  these  arrangements  would 
bring   the   pea<je    effective   up    to   about   half 


a  million  of  men,  and  would  in  time 
produce  an  active  army  and  a  territorial 
army,  amounting,  inclusive  of  their  reserves, 
to  about  2,000,000  apiece.  Thus  did  the  need 
for  self-preservation  at  last  compel  the  French 
people  to  accept  a  system  in  which  "  military 
service  was  equal  for  all,"  and  so  to  fulfil  the 
principle  of  the  law  of  March  4,  1791,  that  "  the 
service  of  the  Fatherland  is  a  civic  and  general 
duty." 

But  these  efforts,  great  as  they  were,  were  not 
long  to  suffice.  Early  in  1912  the  peace  effec- 
tives of  the  German  Army  had  been  raised  ;  by 
the  end  of  that  year  enormous  increases  had 
been  decided  on.  By  October,  1913,  the  pro- 
posals had  become  law.  Whatever  weight  is 
to  be  attached — and  without  doubt  there  was 
much  to  be  said  from  a  German  point  of  view — 
to  the  argument  that  Russian  military  expansion 
had  rendered  these  additions  a  vital  necessity 
to  the  security  of  the  Empire,  it  was  im- 
possible on  that  groimd  for  France  to 
remain  indiffeeat  to  them.  The  question  was 
not,  as  in  1905,  so  much  one  of  further  develop- 
ing her  total  resources  of  men — indeed,  as  has 
been  said,  her  recruiting  powers  had  already 
been  strained  to  their  utmost  limit  by  the  law  of 
1905 — but   of   having   a   Hufficient    proportion 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


189 


of  trained  men  ready  at  any  moment.  It 
was  anticipated  that  the  German  peace-effec- 
tives would,  under  the  new  proposals,  eventually 
be  raised  to  about  870,000,  to  which  France 
could  only  oppose  about  567,000 ;  and  it  was 
of  vital  importance  that  she  should  find  some 
means  of  securing  herself  against  the  sudden 
attack  of  superior  numbers.  The  only  way 
of  doing  this  was  to  keep  each  annual  contingent 
a  longer  time  with  the  colours,  an  expedient 
necessarily  entc^iling  a  larger  expenditure  and 
heavier  sacrifices.  The  Conseil  Superieur  de 
la  Ouerre  decided  unam'mously  in  March, 
1912,  that  the  sole  means  of  diminishing 
efficaciously  the  dangerous  difference  betweea 
the  French  and  German  peace  strengths,  of 
reinforcing  the  troops  on  the  frontier  without 
disorganizing  those  in  the  interior,  of  ensuring 
adequate  training,  and  of  coping  with  the 
accelerated  mobilization  of  Germany,  was  to 
introduce  three  years'  service  with  the  colours 
strictly  and  rigorously  for  all  ranks  and  all 
branches.  "  There  is  something,"  ran  the 
Preamble  of  the  Bill  which  embodied  this 
proposal,  "  which  dominates  all  contingencies, 
which  trivmiphs  over  all  hesitations,  which 
governs  and  dec'des  the  individual  and  collec- 
tive impulses  of  a  great  and  noble  democracy 
like  ours,  namely,  the  resolute  will  to  live 
strong  and  free  and  to  remain  mistress  of 
our  destinies," 


GENERAl,  PBKCIN. 

[Henri  Manuel,  Paris. 


GENERAL  MICHEL. 

This  proposal,  in  spite  of  all  kinds  of  oppo- 
sition, was  eventually  carried  in  1913.  Every 
Frenchman  found  fit  for  service  had  in  future 
to  pass  three  years  in  the  Active  Army,  eleven 
in  the  Reserve,  and  seven  each  in  the  Territorial 
Army  and  the  Territorial  Reserve.  Thus  the 
total  liability  for  service  was  extended  by 
three  years,  an  arrangement  necessarily  carry- 
ing with  it  a  considerable  eventual  increase 
in  the  reserve,  and  raising  the  peace  strength 
to  673,000  men.  Henceforth  the  recruit  was 
to  be  incorporated  at  the  age,  not,  as  had 
hitherto  been  the  practice,  of  21  but  of  20  ;  an 
alteration  calculated  to  minimize  the  effects  of 
the  additional  year  of  active  service  on  his 
future  career.  The  first  to  come  under  the 
new  law  was  the  class  of  1913.  In  order  to 
obtain  the  number  of  instructors  necessary 
for  the  increased  size  of  the  contingent,  special 
bonuses  were  offered  as  an  inducement  to  non- 
commissioned officers  and  old  soldiers  to  re- 
engage ;  and  it  was  anticipated  that  by  the 
spring  of  1914  the  Army  would  have  assimilated 
its  recruits  and  would  be  able  to  mobilize 
satisfactorily.  From  a  military  point  oi  view 
it  is  important  to  observe  that  under  the  new 
arrangement  the  infantry  on  the  higher  estab- 
lishment on  the  frontier  were  raised  to  200  per 
company,  and  those  in  the  interior  to  140, 
respectively  four-fifths  and  rather  over  one- 
half  of  their  war  strength.  The  cavalry 
regiments     were     fixed     at     740 ;     the    field 


190 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


A   MITRAILLEUSE    ON   THE   BACK   OF   A  MULE. 


{Topical. 


batteries  at  140  and  110,  respectively  about 
seven -ninths  and  two -thirds  of  their  fxill 
complement.  The  increased  annual  cost  was 
reckoned  at  £7,000,000,  the  non-recurring  cost 
at  £29,000,000.  From  the  broad  numerical 
point  of  view,  as  The  Times  IVIiHtary  Corre- 
spondent said  at  the  time,  the  Law  was  France's 
last  card.  But  the  new  burden  had  its  com- 
pensations. It  was  calculated  to  give  greater 
security  in  the  first  days  of  mobilization, 
a  somewhat  larger  reserve  and,  had  time  been 
allowed,  a  longer  period  of  training  to  her  rank 
and  file  than  was  the  case  in  Germany.  Un- 
fortxinately  its  full  effects  were  not  obtained 
when  war  broke  out. 

At  the  commencement  of  the  campaign, 
France  j>ossessed,  inclusive  of  the  Territorial 
Army  and  its  Reserve,  fully  4,000,000  of 
trained  men.  This  enormous  mass  may  be 
roughly  divided  into  six  different  categories, 
each  averaging  close  on  700,000  men.  These 
consisted  of  the  peace  establishments  of  the 
Active  Army,  that  portion  of  the  Reserve 
(about  half  of  the  whole)  required  to  bring  the 
Active  Army  up  to  war  strength,  the  remaining 
portion  of  the  Reserve,  the  formed  troops  of 
the  Territorial  Army,  the  depots,  and  finally 
the  surplxis.  The  comparative  values  of  the 
last  five  sections  may  roughly  be  gathered  from 
the  fa-ct  that  the  Army  reservists  were  liable 
to  be  called  up  twice  in  11  years  for  one  month's 


manoeuvres  ;  the  men  of  the  Territorial  Army 
once  in  seven  years  for  a  fortnight's  training  ; 
the  Territorial  reaervists  were  subject  in  seven 
years  to  one  muster  of  a  day.  The  territorial 
distribution,  which  formed  the  basis  of  the  war 
organization,  consisted  of  20  army  corps  dis- 
tricts, including  one  in  Algeria.  These  districts 
again  were  divided,  so  far  as  the  infantry  were 
concerned,  into  districts  each  furnishing  one 
regiment ;  but  cavalry,  engineers,  artillery, 
and  the  chasseur  or  rifle  battalions  were  re- 
cruited throughout  the  army  corps  district,  and 
a  large  proportion  of  these  troops  were  located 
not  in  the  part  of  the  country  in  which  they  were 
raised,  but  wherever  the  requirements  of  in- 
struction or  strategy  lendered  necesseiry.  Thus 
the  bulk  of  the  cavalry  and  the  chasseurs  were 
permanently  located  on  the  eastern  frontier, 
and  the  engineers  were  assembled  foi  purposes 
of  training  at  special  centres.  With  these 
exceptions  each  army  corps  district  comprised 
all  the  elements  required  to  form  an  army  corps  ; 
each  was  mobilized  in  its  own  territorial  area 
and  thence  proceeded  to  the  point  «Jlotted  to 
it  in  the  plan  of  strategic  concentration. 

Mobilization,  of  course,  comprised  not  merely 
the  Active  Army  and  its  Reserve,  but  the  whole 
of  the  Territorial  Army  and  its  Reserve. 
Broadly  speaking  the  scheme  involved  the  fol- 
lowing proceases.  The  peace  establishment  of 
the  Active  Army  w««  to  be  raised  to  war  strength 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


191 


O  Crotjf-  lez-Rou  t/eroy 

^    »      Rouveroy 

re  Boutille 


Coron. 


BIcLregnies 


I" 


O 
Hon 


Ouevy-fet'- 
\  Gor-gnies-Ch^ 

^RdesSarts 


cf 


I      O  Croij(-U 

\  Vieux.  Reno   V 


Merbes-^^'Mdrie 
Persant 

M 


"O    'o^       !Cmrbes-le-Cha.tea.u 


\Cra.nd  Reno  Q 

VV        OBersillies  \        \     X 

A^C/^airieux  ^  \Er(we/in 


Feignies  O    \  -^W^ 


/^ssei'ent 


3(il^ 


OJeumont 


McLrpent 


/'\ 


-a  Longueville      Douzies 

— ^%     ^ 


%^  >Re:Recqui"q'hies% 

V  p  ^ 


V 


REFERENCE. 


Forts 


/ 


^  Da.mousies^ 
Beaurort  C 

j^     Batteries «.  Redoubts    fbataJne  Choisies 


M 


PLAN    OF    THE    MAUBEUGE    FORTRESSES. 


by  the  incorporation  of  a  number  of  reservists 
about  equal  in  nunaber  to  the  men  akeady  serving 
with  the  colours.  The  remaining  Army  reservists 
weie  to  be  formed  into  reserve  units  correspond- 
ing to  those  of  the  Active  Army,  with  the 
result  that  m  war  time  the  units  of  the  Active 
Army  would  be  doubled.  These  Reserve 
units  were  to  be  officered  partly  by  Active, 
partly  by  Reserve  officers,  and,  it  would 
appear,  were  to  receive  in  addition  a 
certain  proportion  of  non-commissioned  officers 
from  the  Active  Army.  If  this  Reserve  Army 
were  employed  at  the  front  the  total  troops  in 
the  first  line  woiild  consist  of  an  active  army  of 
1,400,000—1,500,000  men,and  of  a  Reserve  Army 
of  about  half  that  niunber,  i.e.,  about  2,100,000 
in  all.  The  remaining  2,000,000  odd  of  the 
Territorial  Army  and  its  Reserve  were  to  be 
formed  into  three  bodies  of  about  equal  strength. 
First  of  all  the  Territorial  Army  proper  was  to 
form  urits  corresponding  with  those  of  the 
Active  Army  and  the  Reserve.  Secondly, 
depots  were  to  be  organized  to  replace  casual- 
ties in  the  active  and  reserve  regiments  at  a 
fixed  ratio  per  imit,  giving,  it  was  anticipated, 
about  three  men  at  the  depots  for  every  eight 
in  the  field.  The  remaining  men  of  the  Terri- 
torial Reserve  were  available  as  a  last  resource 
for  the  replenishment  of  the  depots,  and  for 
subsidiary  purposes  of  all  kinds.  In  this  way 
it  was  possible  to  provide  not  merely  for  a 
powerful  fighting  line,  but  for  its  maintenance 
at  full  strength,  and  for  the  auxiliary  services 


in  its  rear ;  in  a  word,  for  a  national  orgam'za- 
tion  capable  of  sustaining  a  war.  Everything 
that  forethought  and  infinite  siipervision  of 
detail  could  suggest  was  done  to  make  the 
enormous  business  of  mobilization  easy  and 
rapid.  Special  care  was  bestowed  on  the  boots 
of  the  infantry  which  were  served  out,  not  new, 
as  was  the  case  in  Germany,  but  sufficiently 
worn  to  be  comfortable,  so  as  to  enstire  that  the 
exceptional  marching  powers  of  the  French 
soldier  should  be  developed  to  the  utmost. 
The  cavalry  regiments  were  maintained  on 
practically  a  war  footing  and  required  com- 
paratively little  preparation.  The  main  diffi- 
culty was  in  the  case  of  the  artillery  and  train, 
the  mobilization  of  which  involved  the  accumu- 
lation of  great  masses  of  materiel,  and  a  con- 
siderable expansion  and  redistribution  of  per- 
sonnel. 

The  method  of  employment  of  the  French 
Army  remained  a  secret ;  everything  depending 
on  the  use  that  would  be  made  of  the  reserve 
and  territorial  formations,  or,  to  speak  more 
exactly,  on  whether  the  reserve  divisions  would 
be  attached  to  the  army  corps  or  formed, 
either  with  or  without  the  addition  of  terri- 
torial troops,  in  separate  army  corps  of  their 
own.  The  possibility  of  variations  of  this 
kind,  as  had  been  recognized  by  the  Japanese, 
the  German,  and  other  modern  armies,  could 
be  reckoned  on  as  one  of  the  most  effective 
means  of  producing  great  strategic  surprises. 
That    is    to     say,    while    every    unit    in     the 


192 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


original  Jager  army  corps  was  known  to  any-  . 
one  who  chose  to  study  the  ordinarj"  text-books, 
the  position,  numbers  and  composition  of 
troops  not  formed  until  mobilization  could  only 
be  guessed  at  and  gave  opportunities  for  secret 
concentration  and  unexpected  attack.  The 
normal  formations  in  the  French  Army  closely 
resembled  the  German.  The  ordinary  infantry 
regiment  contained  three  battalions,  each  of 
1,000  men,  in  four  companies;  the  normal 
brigade  two  regiments ;  the  normal  division 
two  brigades ;  the  normal  army  corps  two 
divisions.  To  these,  as  was  the  custom  in 
the  case  of  the  Jager  battahons,  might  be 
added  a  battalion  of  chasseurs.  The 
corps  cavalry  consisted  of  a  brigade  of  two 
regiments,  the  divisional  cavalry  of  one 
squekdron  per  division.  Only  in  the  artillery 
organization  was  there  a  marked  difference 
from  the  Grerman  arrangement.  Whereas  in 
the  German  Army  Corps  the  artillery  was 
equally  divided  between  the  infantry  divisions, 
in  the  French  the  corps  artillery  was  retained, 
and  numbered  12  batteries,  that  of  the  divisions 
being  nine  batteries  apiece.  The  batteries  only 
contained  foiu*  gvms,  a  numerical  inferiority 
which  it  was  believed  would  be  amply  com- 
pensated by  the  great  superiority  of  the  gun 
itself,  and  by  the  special  skiU  possessed  by  the 
French  artillerymen.  Inclusive  of  gunners 
the  normal  army  corps  numbered  between 
30,000  and  40,000  combatants  and  120  guns. 
A  reserve  of  light  and  heavy  howitzers  marched 
with  the  different  armies.  They  did  not  form 
part  of  the  artillery  of  the  army  corps,  but  were 
intended  to  be  retained  in  the  hand  of  the  army 
commander. 

The  only  remaining  units  that  require 
mention  here  were  the  eight  independent 
cavalry  divisions  and  the  African  troops. 
The  normal  cavalry  division  numbered  six 
regiments,  divided  into  two  or  three  brigades, 
in  which  heavy,  medium,  and  light  cavalry 
were  fairly  evenly  distributed.  The  heavy 
cavalry  consisted  of  the  ever -famous  Cuirassiers, 
the  number  of  whose  regiments  was  the  same 
6ks  in  the  days  when  they  won  immortal  renown 
under  the  great  Emperor ;  they  still  wore  the 
beautiful  helmet  and  cuirass  and  carried  the 
long  thrusting  sword.  The  dragoon  regiments, 
classed  as  medium  cavalry,  were  armed  with  the 
lance.  Attached  to  each  division  were  two 
batteries  of  horse  artillery,  armed  with  the  field 
guns,  but  with  movuited  detachments,  and  some 
galloping  machine  guns.  The  African  infantry 
consisted  of  four  regiments  of  Zouaves,  each  of 
five  battalions,  and  four  of  Algerian  Rifles  or 
**  Turcos,"  each  of  six  ;  there  were  ten  light 


cavalry  regiments,  six  of  Chasseurs  d'Afrique, 
and  four  of  Spahis.  The  Turcos  and 
Spahis  were  blekck  troops  commanded  partly 
by  French,  partly  by  native  oflficers.  All  the 
infantry  were  armed  with  the  Lebel,  a  serviceable 
but  somewhat  antiquated  type  of  magazine 
rifle.  Each  man,  following  the  old  French 
tradition,  seems  to  have  carried  some  601b.,  an 
enormous  weight  likely  to  tell  severely  under 
the  exhausting  conditions  of  modem  fighting. 
Inclusive  of  the  rations  carried  by  the  soldier, 
the  army  corps  took  with  it  eight  days'  supply 
which  was  constantly  replenished  by  the  rail- 
ways in  the  rear.  The  solution  of  the  problem 
of  the  transport  of  supplies  between  the  rail- 
heads and  the  armies  had  in  the  years  preceding 
the  war  been  greatly  fsicihtated  by  the  intro- 
duction of  motor -lorries.  It  was  found  that  a 
comparatively  small  number  of  these  vehicles 
sufficed  for  the  daily  supply  of  an  eunny  corps, 
£ind  rendered  the  massing  of  endless  trains  of 
horsed  wagons  in  the  rear  of  the  troops  un- 
necessary. The  practical  advantages  of  the 
new  system  need  no  illustration. 

Thus  far  we  have  confined  ourselves  to  the 
history  of  the  construction  and  organization  of 
the  national  army — a  history  which  jvistified  the 
proud  boast  of  the  French  Minister  of  Wax  in 
1908  :  "  L'Armee  Fran9aise,  c'est  la  France.'' 
We  mxist  now  turn  to  its  training.  Since  1870 
the  French  Army  had  undergone  a  moral  and  in- 
tellectual revolution.  At  that  melancholy  period 
it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the  methods 
of  French  leadership  had  tended  to  discard  or 
depress  aU  the  grand  traditions  and  qualities 
that  had  made  the  French  Army  the  most 
famous  of  modem  history.  From  top  to  bottom 
it  was  characterized  by  a  tendency  to  exaggerate 
the  defensive  power  of  modem  weapons,  by  a 
neglect  of  the  theory  and  practice  of  the  higher 
art  of  generalship,  and  by  a  tentative  and  piece- 
meal employment  of  aU  the  arms  ;  a  combina- 
tion of  weaknesses  which  made  resolute  and 
effective  action  on  the  battlefield  impossible, 
and  rendered  inoperative  those  moral  factors 
to  which  the  great  warriors  of  the  past  had  been 
accustomed  to  appeal.  But  during  the  years  of 
recovery  after  the  Franco -Prussian  War,  and 
especially  during  the  first  decade  of  the  20th 
century,  there  had  arisen  a  generation  which 
took  a  juster  and  more  inspiring  view  of  the 
special  capacities  of  the  French  soldier.  The 
adoption  of  a  national  system  and  the  knowledge 
that  upon  its  soundness  would  henceforth 
depend  the  existence  of  France  £is  a  great 
Power  had  placed  at  the  command  of  the 
Ministry  of  War  all  that  was  best  in  the  Frerch 
people  and  the  French  mind.    The  resuli.  was 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


193 


i*iiiiiiiiii  1  III  %^....^^^ 

iSiiMBiiBl 

A    GROUP    OF    ZOUAVES. 


TRANSPORT    OF   A    FRENCH   HEAVY    GUN. 


194 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


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FRENCH    TROOPS    MARCHING    THROUGH    PARIS. 


HUY. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


195 


Qu'esnoy-surDeuie.  Tour  CO) 

Bondues 

°  o 

MiENTTERES   ^}f^^l    -^tftlobau 

'^  Verlin^hem^  Marquette       q  / 

'^"■'    Lompret  \    ^  H-  /      "iCro/r 

<B'.^DESENA^MiwiT   O 

^         Lambersart/ 
Capinghemo  /CtTADEL^ 

I  \      / 

\     X 

/     loosO 

^ubourdin 
%ntes     ^^g^^^^'^ 


^ 


JeTouquet    : 


^<^ 


WaiquehyO 


LdnnOJ/  dtANord 

i^FTMACDONALD     O 

\r\  r-i —  jo  forest 


\f 


^OF/ers 

^/'i/es  \      o.  f 

\^     ^Annappes 

■^       O 
O        li  Ascq 
lezennes'^ 

\Anstdm 


Wavrifi 


Herrin 
O 


Houplin  o 

Sec//n< 


fjyfonchh 
Lesqui/iQ 

\      .!> 
JJ/7^eK///e      F3  Bo  U  VINES 


Fretin 
O 


O 
Louvif 


MILES 
E  3 


'y^^ 


Ennevelin  \  Bois  /e  Ville 
O  \  O 


'^ont-d-MarcS' 


PLAN    OF    THE    LILLE    FORTRESSES. 


the  development  of  a  national  school  of  tactics 
and  strategy,  complete,  coherent  and  well-fitted 
to  the  bold  and  ardent  character  of  the  troops. 
We  do  not  propose  in  this  place  to  disoiissthe 
French  theory  of  strategy  and  grand  tactics,  or 
to  compare  it  with  that  which  prevailed  in 
Germany.  We  shall  deal  with  these  all  impor- 
tant subjects  in  a  later  section  { f  this  work, 
and  for  the  present  shall  content  ovirselves  with 
a  brief  description  of  French  minor  tactics.    . 

These  tactics  were,  in  accordance  with  tradi- 
tion and  national  temperament,  dominated  by 
the  idea  of  the  offensive  ;  but  they  found  their 
technical  justification  in  the  superior  arma- 
ment of  the  artillery  and  the  special  support 
which  that  arm  was  expected  to  afford  to  the 
infantry.  This,  in  the  opinion  of  the  French, 
made  it  possible  for  them  to  assign  to  infantry 
fire  a  less  important  place  in  the  preparatory 
stages  of  an  action  than  was  regarded. as  per- 
missible in  the  German  Army.  The  busi- 
ness of  the  infantry  was  to  "  conquer 
and  win  ground  "  ;  it  had  two  means 
of    action,    "  fire    and  forward    movemeiit  "  ; 


"  the  only  object  of  fire  was  to  prepare  for  the 
resumption  of  a  forward  movement."  Fire, 
that  is,  was  to  be  a  means,  not  an  end  ;  and  the 
idea  of  a  stationary  defensive  wa.s  not  admitted* 
This  theory  of  infantry  action  was  intended  to  be 
realized  by  a  system  of  manoeuvre  and  distribu- 
tion which,  while  it  insisted  on  the  use  of  mass 
at  the  decisive  point,  aimed  at  com- 
bining perfect  elasticity  and  adaptability 
with  careful  economy  of  men  and  anunu- 
nition.  With  these  objects  in  view,  long  range 
firing,  except  under  special  conditions  and  when 
carried  out  by  picked  shots,  was  discouraged ; 
the  distant  zones  were  to  be  crossed  as  rapidly 
as  possible,  in  close  bodies  when  shelter  was 
forthcorning,  in  small  groups  when  it  was 
not.  The  aim  of  the  assailant  was  to  get  to 
within  fixed-sight  range  before  firing  a  shot, 
or  nearer  still  if  it  was  possible  to  do  so  :  and 
for  the  same  reason  the  deployment  of  the 
firtng  line  was  to  be  delayed  vrntU  further 
advance  without  firing  became  impracticable. 
Only  the  troops  necessary  for  the  special  pur- 
pose   were    to    be    deployed,    the    premature 


196 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


expenditure  of  men  in  open  formations  being 
regarded  as  one  of  the  most  serious  of  faults. 
Once,  however,  a  firing  line  had  been  constituted, 
it  was  to  be  rapidly  reinforced,  s  •  that  the 
fire  should  grow  heavier  and  the  line  more  dense 
the  nearer  the  moment  of  the  decisive  ttack 
approached.  Fire  was  not  to  be  continuous, 
but,  as  in  the  case  of  the  artillery,  was  to  be 
delivered  in  gusts,  "  sudden,  brief,  viciovis  and 
violent,"  according  as  a  target  presented  it- 
self. The  preparation  for  the  attack  was  to 
culminate  in  an  overwhelming  short  range  fire 
upon  the  whole  of  the  defender's  position,  pre- 
venting the  action  of  his  reserves  and  weakening 
his  fire  sufficiently  to  allow  of  the  advance  *of 
those  of  the  assailant.  The  final  assault  was 
to  be  delivered  in  jnass  upon  the  decisive 
point ;  rapidity  and  the  bayonet  rather  than 
fire  effect  being  relied  on  in  this  last  phase 
of  an  action.  To  the  commander  was  left 
the  selection  of  objectives,  the  distribution  of 
the  troops,  and  the  choice  of  the  time  and  place 
of  the  final  attack. 

This  niethod  of  attack  was  well  calculated 
to  appeal  to  an  ardent  and  intelligent  infantry, 
and  to  judge  from  the  manoeuvres  it  was  well 
imderstood  and  executed.  Its  forms  at  least 
had  historical  sanction.  They  bore  a  distinct 
resemblance  to  the  cmnulative  and  tempestuous 
attack  of  the  French  infantry  in  the  best  days 
of  Napoleon.  The  swarms  and  chains  of 
tirailleurs,  the  quick  and  supple  action  of 
small  columns,  the  final  advance  of  heavier 
masses  were  all  characteristic  of  the  tactics 
of  the  Grande  Armee.  That  the  moral  and 
physical  qualities  of  the  men  were  still  the  same 
was  not  doubted.  "  There  are  practically  no 
limits,'"  wrote  The  Times  Military  Corre- 
spondent in  1906,  "  to  the  demands  which  can 
be  made  upon  the  endurance  of  the  French 
'nfantry  by  a  leader  who  imderstands  them, 
and    whom    they    trust." 

In  support  of  this  quick  and  daring  in- 
fantry the  French  possessed  what  was  generally 
regarded  as  the  best  artillery  in  Europe.  The 
gun  was  a  true  quick-firer  ;  its  rapidity,  thanks 
largely  to  the  arrangement  known  as  the 
independent  line  of  sight,*  astonished  those 
who  had  seen  it  in  practice.  It  was  a  powerful 
and  accurate  weapon  throwing  shrapnel  or 
high-explosion  shell  of  about  151b.  ;  its  only 
weak  points  being  that  it  was  some- 
what heavy  and  that  the  shield  with 
which      it    was    fitted    was  rather    small.  .  Its 


*The  principle  of  this  contrivance  is  that  the  work  of  regulating 
the  elevation  and  the  sighting  is  greatly  quickened  by  being  divided 
between  two  men  instead  of,  as  in  older  sye  terns,  being  entrusted 
to  one. 


technical  superiority,  combined  with  the  greater 
handiness  of  the  small  battery,  seemed  amply 
to  justify  the  belief  of  the  French  that  four  such 
guns  were  at  least  equal  to  six  of  the  older 
German  type.  This  belief  was  strengthened 
by  their  confidence  in  their  tactical  methods. 
The  principles  on  which  they  were  based  were 
much  the  same  as  those  which  governed  the 
action  of  the  infantry.  Here  also  economy  in 
guns  and  ammiinition  was  insisted  on,  while 
at  the  same  time  it  was  clearly  understood 
that  at  critical  moments  the  artillery  should 
not  hesitate  to  expose  itself  to  heavy  rifle 
fire,  and  should  advance  at  all  costs  if  the 
infantry  required  its  support.  Indirect  fire 
was  employed  whenever  possible,  and  no  guns 
were  sent  into  action  iinless  the  tactical  situation 
demanded  it.  Long  range  fire,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  infantry,  was  unusual ;  4,000  yards  was 
rarely  exceeded,  the  view  of  the  authorities 
being  that  in  Europe  opportunities  for  long- 
distance shooting  would  rarely  occur.  Within 
that  range  various  forms  of  fire  were  carefully 
practised,  the  object  being  not  merely  to  hit  a 
visible  object,  but  to  make  defined  zones  of 
ground,  whether  invisible  or  not,  untenable  or 
impassable.  Very  accurate  ranging,  carried 
out  slowly  and  followed  by  a  deliberate  fire, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  German  artillery, 
was  not  a  characteristic  of  the  French  gunner, 
all  such  elaborate  procedures  in  his  view  being 
xmsuited  to  the  conditions  of  the  battlefield. 
He  regarded  the  rafale,  that  is,  a  sudden  tempest 
of  shell,  lasting  for  a  few  seconds  and  sweeping 
a  given  area,  as  the  more  effective  method  of 
the  two.  The  expenditure  of  ammunition  in- 
volved by  such  a  procedure  was  provided  for 
by  an  exceptionally  large  supply,  amounting, 
inclusive  of  that  carried  in  the  army  corps 
park,  to  about  500  rounds  per  gun.  Tactically 
the  batteries  accompanying  an  army  corps 
in  action  were  destined  for  separate  action, 
the  Corps  Artillery  (12  batteries)  being  intended 
to  crush  the  opposing  artillery,  the  divisional 
batteries  (18)  to  shatter  the  hostile  infantry. 
Naturally  such  a  rule  was  made  subject  to 
infinitely  varying  conditions,  but  the  defini- 
tion of  the  two  different  tasks  that  would  fall 
to  the  lot  of  artillery  and  the  detailing  of 
special  units  for  the  accomplishment  of  each, 
are  typical  of  the  French  love  of  clearness  and 
precision.  It  was  generally  agreed  that  the 
tactical  combination  of  the  artUlery  and  infantry 
was  exceptionally  well  managed,  and  that  the 
science  of  the  officers  and  the  courage  and 
endurance  of  the  rank  and  file  of  the  artillery 
left  nothing  to  be  desired. 

In  many  respects  the  French  cavalry  of  1914 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAB. 


197 


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BEIFORT     "%lA JUSTICE^T  „p  BESSONCOURT 
°^Mon  ChUon,,lij:^^'  «*'"'"2^l^^?Srs°fff"  PERCHES 

F-DUM^VaUDO,J'      "''"'yman^     \   ,,?JtFTOEVEZEU0.S 

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REFERENCE. 
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£2i. 


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^    Batteries 


PLAN    OF    THE    BELFORT    FORTRESSES. 


was  the  best  France  ever  produced.  The 
riding  was  good,  the  horses  excellent,  and  if, 
according  to  British  ideas,  the  French  horse- 
men were  too  much  inclined  to  trust  to  shock - 
action  and  too  little  to  the  rifle,  no  one 
doubted  that  they  fully  realized  the 
importance  of  their  strategic  mission,  and 
the  truth  of  the  old  dicta  that  "  Cavalry  is 
made  for  action "  and  that  "  any  decision 
is  better  than  none."  For  them,  also,  the 
principle  of  economy  of  forces,  late  deploy- 
ment, and  strong  reserves  held  good ;  and 
special  attention  was  devoted  to  the  business 
of  scouting. 

Everything  in  the  case  of  the  French,  even 
more  than  in  that  of  other  armies,  depended 
on  the  leadership,  and  doubts  were  sometimes 
expressed  as  to  whether  the  French  officer- 
corps,  especially  in  its  higher  branches,  would 
prove  equal  to  its  task.  France  did  not 
possess,  like  Prussia,  a  military  aristocracy, 
a  special  class  set  apart  by  tradition  and  by 
its  social  status  for  the  task  of  leading  armies. 
But  the  high  standard  maintained  in  all  parts 
of  the  Army,  to  say  nothing  of  the  witness  of 
history,   seemed   a  sufficient  answer   to   such 


dubitations.  The  training  appears  to  have 
been  sound  and  thorough,  at  any  rate  as  far 
as  the  officers  of  the  first  line  were  concerned. 
All  candidates  for  commissioned  rank,  whether 
they  passed  through  St.  Cyr  or  the  Ecole 
Poly  technique  (the  Sandhurst  and  the  Woolwich 
of  France),  or  were  promoted  from  the  ranks, 
had  first  to  serve  as  privates  and  had  then  to  pass 
qualifying  examinations.  The  final  examina- 
tion was  competitive  as  well  as  comprehen- 
sive. Promotion  from  the  rank  of  major  and 
above  it  was  entirely  by  selection,  in  the  lower 
ranks  it  was  decided  partly  by  selection  and 
partly  by  seniority.  The  officers  of  the  Reserve 
and  Territorial  Army  were  not  required  to 
satisfy  so  high  a  technical  standard  ;  but  all 
had  to  serve  six  months  with  the  colours,  and 
were  liable  to  be  called  up  for  instruction  every 
two  years.  The  Staff  of  the  Army,  whose 
weakness  largely  contributed  to  the  disasters 
of  1870,  had  immensely  improved.  All  candi' 
dates  for  the  Staff  heid  to  pass  a  competitive  en- 
trance examination  at  the  Ecole  Superieure  de  la 
Guerre,  an  institution  corresponding  to  oiir 
Staff  College,  and  after  passing  another  at  the 
termination    of    the    course,    went   through  a 


> 


198 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


BELGIAN    SCOUTS    ON    THE    BATTLEFIELD    OF  WATERLOO. 


two -years'  probation  on  a  staff,  being  attached 
during  that  period  to  other  arms  than  their 
own.  Thenceforward  they  spent  their  time, 
as  did  Prussian  Staff  officers,  alternately  with 
their  unit  and  on  staff  duty,  every  step  in 
promotion  being  preceded  by  two  years'  service 
with  their  unit.  There  is  ample  evidence  to 
show  that  their  work  in  all  branches  was  done 
very  efficiently  and  very  rapidly.  A  striking, 
if  not  an  unimpeachable,  witness  to  their  high 
quaUties  is  to  be  found  in  the  large  amount 
of  important  Uteratvire  produced  during  the  last 
20  or  30  years  by  individual  officers.  Maillard, 
Langlois,  Bonnal,  and  Foch,  not  to  mention 
others,  were  men  whose  historical  and  pro- 
fessional studies  influenced  thought  in  perhaps 
a  greater  degree  than  any  other  miUtary 
writers  of  the  age,  and  with  hardly  an  exception 
were  far  superior  to  anything  produced  during 
the  last  30  years  in.  Germany.  This  literary 
act".  >  ity  w6e  very  chai-acteristic  of  the  renaissance 
of  the  French  Army  ;  and  it  is  significant  that 
the  new  school  of  writers,  throwing  aside  the 
decadent  ideas  of  the  Second  Empire,  drew 
their  inspiration  not  from  Germany,  but  from 
that  supreme  repository  of  miUtary  instruction, 
the  theory  and  prtictice  of  Napoleon.  Nor  did 
French  militaxy  thinkers  confine  themselves 
to  this  work  of  tactical   and   strategical  re- 


construction. Hand  in  hand  with  it  the  scientific 
genius  of  the  nation  led  the  way  in  military 
invention.  The  French  were  the  first  to  re- 
arm their  artillery  with  a  quick-firing  gun  ;  and 
in  aviation  they  had  strong  claims  to  be  con- 
sidered the  pioneers  of  the  world.  It  was  not 
merely  its  generous  heart  and  fiery  soul  that 
made  the  army  formidable  in  1914  ;  with  these 
there  also  moved  to  battle  that  other  tutelary 
spirit  of  France,  her  clear  and  splendid  intelli- 
gence. 

The  question  of  the  higher  military  com- 
mand was  one  that  for  many  years  had  exercised 
the  minds  of  Frenchmen,  and  the  solution  offered 
by  the  decrees  of  1911  was  not  entirely  satis- 
factory. Down  to  that  year  the  business  of 
preparation  for  war  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
Conseil  Superieur  de  la  Guerre,  a  body  pre- 
sided over  by  the  Minister  of  War,  which  could 
be  summoned  at  any  time  by  the  President  of  the 
Republic,  and  whose  dehberations  could  on  those 
occasions  be  attended  by  the  Prime  Minister  and 
the  Minister  of  Marine.  It  consisted  generally 
of  a  committee  of  ten,  and  included  as  its  Vice- 
President  the  Generalissime  appointed  to  direct 
the  principal  group  of  the  French  armies  in 
time  of  war,  besides  several  officers  destined 
for  the  command  of  separate  armies.  The  defect 
of  this  system  was  that  none  of  its  members 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


199 


were  in  close  touch  with  the  General  Staff, 
or  possessed  any  staff  of  their  own  correspond- 
ing with  the  importance  of  their  missions.  By 
the  Presidential  decree  of  1911  these  defi- 
ciencies were  repaired.  The  chiefs  of  the  new 
Army  staffs  were  formed  into  a  General  Staff 
Committee  under  the  Generalissime,  to  whom 
was  accorded  the  title  of  Chef  d'Etat  Major- 
General.  In  time  of  war  he  was  to  be  seconded 
by  the  Chef  d'Etat  Major  de  I'armee,  who  was 
intended  to  remain  by  the  side  of  the  Minister  of 
War  as  the  representative  of  the  General 
Staff.  At  the  same  time  the  work  of  the 
General  Staff  was  redistributed,  the  division 
dealing  with  preparation  for  war  being  placed 
under  a  Sous-Chef  d'Etat  Major,  this  officer 
being  destined  in  time  of  war  to  act  as  chief  of 
the  staff  of  the  Generalissime  in  the  field. 
The  Chef  d'Etat  Major-General  (or  future 
Generalissime)  and  the  Chef  d'Etat  Major  de 
I'armee  (or  the  future  adviser  of  the  Minister 
in  war  time)  were  included  among  the  members 
of  the  Conseil  Superieur.  These  arrangements 
made  it  possible  for  the  Generalissime  per- 
sonally to  direct  the  chiefs  of  the  separate 
army  staffs,  and  at  the  same  time  to  share  in 
the  work  of  the  Conseil  Superieur  and  exchange 
views  with  the  destined  Commanders  of  the 
Armies,  a  combination  which,  it  was  hoped, 
would  smooth  the  way  to  a  commimity  of  views 
and  policy  and  would  provide  all  the  commanders 
with  suitable  staff  organs  of  their  o^en.  The 
plan  seemed  a  cumbrous  one,  but  it  was  pro- 
bably the  only  means  by  which  the  General 
Staff  could  be  brought  into  line  with  the  Con- 
seil Superieur,  a  matter  which  the  military, 
constitutional  and  political  significance  of  that 
body  rendered  essential  to  the  wellbeing  of 
the  Army.  The  peculiarity  of  the  relation  of 
the  Army  and  of  the  civil  Government  is  brought 
out  by  the  fact  that  the  Minister  insisted  on 
his  right  to  appoint  Army  commanders,  and 
that  the  decree  of  1911  actually  restricted 
their  tenure  of  these  all  important  posts  to  a 
single  year.  The  advantages  possessed  in 
these  matters  by  a  monarchical  Government 
of  the  Prussian  type  over  a  Republican  system 
are  obvious  and  require  no  comment.  A  good 
deal  of  criticism  both  in  and  outside  France 
was  directed  to  considerations  of  this  kind  in 
the  years  before  the  war.  It  was  said  that 
the  discipline  and  spirit  of  the  Army  was  sapped 
by  anti-militarist  propaganda,  that  its  per- 
sonnel was  of  unequal  quality,  that  the  nation 
was  rent  by  political  divisions,  that  the  succes- 
sive governments  were  weak  and  tmstable,  and 
that  the  good  of  the  Army,  especially  in  the 
Boatter  of  the  higher  command,  was  constantly 


sacrificed  to  intrigue.  When  war  ca«ie  it  was 
at  once  evident  that  these"  views  were  far 
from  being  justified  by  the  facts.  In  face  of 
the  national  danger  divisions  disappeared  to  a 
degree  that  those  who  knew  France  best 
would  a  few  weeks  earUer  have  pronotinced 
impossible.  Anti- militarism  became  voiceless 
and  was  abandoned  by  its  foremost  advocates, 
including  the  lamented  M.  Jaures,  who  was 
assassinated  as  a  "  traitor  "  after  he  had 
made  it  known  that  he  renounced  his  ordi- 
nary views  as  inopportune  and  unpatriotic. 
How  far  General  Joffre,  a  soldier  of  great 
Colonial  distinction  and  wide  experience  of 
high  command,  and  his  subordinates  would 
prove  equal  to  their  task,  and.  how  far  the 
French  Army  itself  would  prove  worthy  of 
its  old  renown,  the  events  of  the  campaign 
alone  could  show.  But  of  the  nature  of  the 
dominant  motive  none  could  doubt  for  a  single 
instant.  Frenchmen  had  but  one  object,  the 
preservation  of  their  beloved  country ;  and 
but  one  thought,  how  best  they  might 
serve  her  interests. 

A  word  must  be  said  in  conclusion  as  to  the 
general  plan  of  campaign.  Its  opening  phase 
was  bound  to  be  of  a  defensive  character, 
although  the  defence,  concordantly  with  the 
national  temperament  and  French  military 
theory,  was  certain  to  take  an  active  form. 
France's  policy,  and  her  earnest  wish  to  avoid 
war  if  war  could  be  avoided  with  honour,  for- 
bade the  assumption  of  an  aggressive  attitude, 
even  if  her  inferior  munbers  and  the  expected 
slowness  of  the  Russian  concentration  had  not 
rendered  an  offensive  impossible  from  a  miU- 
tary  point  of  view.  She  could  not  expect  her 
Ally  seriously  to  affect  the  situation  before 
the  20th  day  of  mobilization,  and  for  the  first 
30  days  at  least  she  could  not  coiint  on  any 
diminution  of  the  hostile  forces  directed 
against  herself.  She  knew  that  she  would  be 
obliged  for  a  more  or  less  indefinite  period  to 
devote  her  energies  to  repelling  a  superior 
enemy.  It  was  consequently  obvious  that 
she  woTild  be  compelled,  at  any  rate  until  the 
enemy's  main  line  of  attack  became  certain, 
to  submit  in  some  measure  to  his  initiative 
and  so  to  distribute  the  bulk  of  her  forces  as 
to  render  them  available  to  meet  the  impend- 
ing blow  wherever  it  might  fall.  Such  a  task 
is  one  of  the  hardest  that  war  can  demand  oi 
an  army  and  a  nation.  There  was  a  good 
deal  to  be  said  for  the  view,  which  was  c\xrrent 
in  Germany,  that  from  the  technical  as  well 
as  from  the  moral  point  of  view  the  role  of  the 
defender  had  been  made  more  difficult  by 
modem  conditions.     According  to  this  school 


2(H) 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


REPUBLICAN    GUARDS    IN    PARIS. 


[Daily  Mirror. 


of  thought,  the  view  of  Clausewitz  that  the 
defender  would  always  have  on  his  side  the 
advantages  of  concealment  and  time,  and  that 
the  assailant  would  always  be  exposed  to  the 
risk  of  discovery  and  of  premature  conunit- 
ment,  was  less  applicable  than  of  old.  The 
enormous  size  of  modern  armies,  the  immense 
breadth  and  depth  of  fronts,  whether  in  the 
theatre  of  war  or  on  the  battlefield,  and  the 
consequent  difficulty  of  accurate  observation, 
were  believed  considerably  to  have  reduced  the 
advantages  of  that  deferred  fonn  of  action 
which  the  great  Prussian  author,  writing  of 
days  when  armies  were  comparatively  small 
and  visible,  regarded  as  outweighing  the  moral 
advantages  of  the  offensive.  Most  of  the 
experience  of  1870  and  1905  seemed  to  prove 
that  the  advantage  had  passed  to  the  army 
which  was  powerfvil  enough  to  take  the  offen- 
sive, to  seize  the  initiative,  to  be  first  on  the 
spot.  On  the  other  hand  it  was  held  in  France 
that  the  counter-attack  was  a  tremendously 
powerful  weapon,  perfectly  capable  of  giving 
victory  to  the  defenders,  providing  that  there 
were  forthcoming  on  the  part  of  their  com- 
manders the  knowledge,  judgment,  and  resolu- 
tion necessary  to  enable  them  to  profit  by  the 
mistakes  and  the  exhaustion  of  the  assailant ; 
and  on  the  part  of  their  people  the  intelligence 
and  endurance  necessary  to  enable  them  to 


\inderstaiid  and  to  wait.  Such  were,  in  brief* 
the  two  strategic  theories  which  circvimstances 
and  poHcy  were  destined  to  bring  into  opposi- 
tion on  the  French  frontiers. 

To  find  the  means,  in  accordance  with  their 
strategic  theory,  of  carrying  on  an  effective 
defensive  until  the  moment  when  a  suc- 
cessful Russian  advance  would  enable  them 
to  assume  the  offensive,  was  the  task  of 
the  French  commanders.  Broadly  speaking, 
the  possible  front  of  the  main  German 
concentration  extended  roughly  from  Aix- 
la-Chapelle,  close  to  the  meeting  of  the 
Dutch,  German,  and  Belgian  frontiers,  to 
the  point  of  the  Vosges  at  Schirmeck,  west  of 
Strassburg,  a  breadth  of  about  180  miles  ; 
and  whatever  the  probabilities  it  would  be 
impossible  to  say,  until  the  form  of  the  concen- 
tration was  fairly  defined,  exactly  the  point 
where  the  real  effort  would  be  made.  All  that 
could  be  safely  predicted  would  be  that  once 
begun,  and  from  whatever  point,  it  would  be 
pushed  forward  as  fast  as  possible  and  as 
straight  as  possible  upon  Paris,  that  is  to  say 
that  the  main  fighting  was  bovmd  to  take  place 
somewhere  within  the  triangle  of  Liege,  Strass- 
burg, and  Paris,  or  close  to  its  sides  ;  an  area 
which,  from  the  French  point  of  view  and 
speaking  purely  geographically,  would  be 
covered  by  a  preliminary   concentration   from 


THE    TIMES    m STORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


201 


DINANT. 


Maubeuge  to  Toul  (a  breadth  of  150  miles). 
But,  while  admitting  that  it  would  be  necessary 
to  occupy  in  some  degree  the  whole  of  this  por- 
tion of  the  frontier,  not  to  mention  the  spaces 
towards  LUle  on  the  one  flank  and  Belf  ort  on  the 
other,  anything  like  an  equal  distribution  of 
force  along  it  would  obviously  be  a  negation  of 
all  modern  strategic  teaching,  a  return  to  the 
cordon  system  condemned  fj,  century  ago. 
The  French  concentration  had  to  be  fixed  with 
a  view  to  certain  definite  strategic  eventualities. 
These  were  comparativelj^  few.  It  was  evident 
for  years  before  the  war  that  only  two  main 
alternatives,  already  referred  to  in  Chapter  2, 
were  open  to  Germany.  It  was  certain, 
owing  to  the  lie  of  French  and  German  territory, 
the  arrangement  of  the  German  railways,  and  the 


distribution  of  the  French  fortress  system  south- 
ward and  in  rear  of  Epinal,  that  no  large 
concentration  would  take  place  in  Upper 
Alsace  ;  but  that,  while  leaving  sufficient  troops 
between  Strassburg  and  the  French  frontier 
to  retard  any  attempt  at  a  French  offensive 
from  the  south,  the  Germans  had  to  choose 
batween  a  grand  offensive  from  Lorraine 
(Thionville-Metz-Schirmeck)  or  one  from  the 
front  Metz-Aix-la-Chapelle,  passing  through 
the  neutral  territory  of  Belgium,  and  Luxem- 
burg. The  first  involved  the  storming  of  the 
French  barrier  forts  between  the  fortresses  of 
Verdun-Toul  and  Nancy,  and  could  best  be 
met  by  a  concentration  of  the  main  French 
Army  on  that  formidable  front,  and  in  the  gaps 
on   its    flanks.     Such   a   concentration,    which 


•> 


202 


204 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


was  rendered  feasible  by  the  strength  of  the 
covering  troops,  might  be  expected  to  enable 
the  French  Army  to  accept  battle  under  very 
favourable  conditions,  for  the  front  of  the 
position  would  be  enormously  strong,  and 
the  fortresses  would  afford  excellent  pivots 
for  out-flanking  operations,  or  for  counter 
attacks  if  the  enemy  endeavoured  to  turn  them. 
The  northern  alternative  was  by  soms  regarded 
as  even  more  unfavourable  to  the  Grcrman 
Army,  on  the  ground  that  the  passage  through 
Belgium,  and  the  capture  of  the  Belgian 
fortresses,  would  occupy  more  time  and  cost 
more  men  than  even  the  storming  of  the  Verdun- 
Toul  defences.  In  any  case  it  was  certain 
that  even  if  the  Belgian  resistance  was  neg- 
Mgible,  some  days  must  elapse  before  the 
invading  hosts  could  reach  the  French  frontiers  ; 
while,  if  it  W8ks  vigorovis,  it  might  even  be 
possible  for  the  French  Army  to  join  the 
Belgian  Army  and  operate  in  conjunction  with 
its  Ally.  Nor  was  it  to  be  forgotten  that  the 
intervention  of  a  British  Army  was  more 
Ukely  to  take  place  in  the  event  of  a 
violation  of  Belgium  than  otherwise.  From 
the  French    point    of     view,    moreover,    the 


existence  of  neutral  territory  offered  another 
important  advantage.  It  was  hardly  likely 
that  Germany  would  invade  neutral  territory 
unless  she  meant  to  make  serious  use  of  it. 
The  news  of  the  violation  of  Belgium,  therefore, 
seemed  calculated  to  set  doubts  at  rest  as  to 
the  zone  which  the  Grermans  had  chosen  for 
their  main  effort,  and  therefore  to  indicate 
the  direction  in  which  the  main  French  con- 
centration would  have  to  take  place.  Beyond 
this  nothing  was  certain.  The  strength  of  the 
Belgian  resistance,  the  stopping  power  of  the 
fortresses,  the  intended  Unes  of  advance  and 
the  relative  distribution  of  the  German  troops, 
as  well  as  the  total  strength  of  the  hostile  force 
in  the  northern  area  could  only  be  cleared  up 
by  the  operations  themselves.  In  one  other 
important  respect  the  French  were  lucky.  The 
neutral  attitude  of  Spain,  and  especially  of 
Italy,  freed  them  of  all  apprehensions  on  their 
south-eastern  and  southern  frontiers.  It  was 
from  the  first  possible  for  them  to  accumulate  a 
considerably  larger  force  of  troops  on  their 
western  frontier  than  could  have  been  reckoned 
upon  with  any  safety  in  the  plans  drawn  up 
in  time  of  peace. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 


THE   FRENCH  THEORY   OF    WAR. 


HisTOBiCAL  Evolution  of  French  Strategy  since  1870 — Influence  of  Napoleon  ;  His  Four 
Maxims — The  "  General  Reserve  " — Criticisms  on  Neo -Napoleonic  Strategy — The  Flank 
Attack  and  Envelopment  Doctrine — Shrapnel  and  the  "  Canon  de  75  " — The  "  Mass  of 
Manceuvre  " — Importance  of  Manceuvres — Protective  Detachments — Strategic  Advanced 
Guards — ^The  "  Manceuvre  upon  a  Fixed  P6int  " — Concentration  on  a  Flank — The  Lozenge 
Formation  of  Napoleon — Colonel  de  Grandmaison's  Chain  of  Independent  Masses  with 
Reserves — French  Tactics. 


THE  conceptions  of  modem  war- 
fare held  in  France  were  very 
different  from  the  German  ones» 
though  the  forms  in  which  these 
were  expressed  in  practice  possessed  certr,In 
outward  similarities,  which  deluded  some 
people  into  imagining  that  there  was  much  in 
common  with,  and  little  difference  in,  the 
rival  doctrines.  It  was  not  so.  For  though  the 
French  and  the  German  infantries  formed  their 
outposts,  assaiilted  with  the  bayonet,  drilled 
and  carried  out  many  other  operations  in  practi- 
cally the  same  way,  yet  as  to  the  ideas  and  ob- 
jects which  these  forms  were  meant  to  realize 
they  differed  fundamentally. 

After  the  defeats  of  1870  France  was  for  years 
the  very  humble  pupil  of  Moltke,  and,  moreover, 
foreseeing  that  her  mobilization  was  boiond  to 
take  longer  than  that  of  Germany,  she  had 
resigned  herself  to  meet  the  naked  simple  offen- 
sive of  her  neighbour  with  a  naked  simple 
defensive.  The  expression  of  this  negative 
doctrine  was  the  lines  of  fortresses  and  barrier 
forts  Lille-Valenciennes-Maubeuge,  Verdun- 
Toul,  and  Epinal-Belfort-BesanQon  with  their 
trouees  or  gaps  that  were  intended  to  "  canalize 
the  flood  of  invasion."  This  conception  hard- 
ened during  the  troubled  years  in  which  France 
was  settling  down  to  the  new  system  of  republi- 
can government  and  personal  military  service. 
But  from  about  1888  a  new  current  of  ideas 
set  in.  For  one  thing,  the  advent  of  smokeless 
powder  seemed  to  challenge  the  data  of  1870, 


and  for  another,  a  pecuh'arly  brilliant  group  of 
military  thinkers,  men  who  had  been  ardent 
young  soldiers  in  the  disasters  of  Vannee  terrible 
and  had  come  to  maturity  in  the  study  of  their 
disasters,  came  at  the  psychological  moment 
to  positions  of  influence.  These  men  set  to 
work  to  discover  the  key  of  Prussia's  successes, 
and  found  it  in  the  fact  that  Moltke  iiad  gone 
back  to  Napoleon.  So  back  they  too  went  to 
the  Emperor.  The  archives  were  ransacked. 
Volume  after  volume  of  original  documents, 
edited  and  annotated,  were  published  by  the 
new  military  history  section  of  the  General 
Staff,  and  a  new  doctrine  began  to  take  shape. 
It  was  in  the  spirit  of  this  doctrine,  tempered 
by  a  more  recent  intellectual  revolt  against  the 
more  extreme  advocates  who  had  sought  to 
apply  it  in  season  and  out  of  season,  that  the 
French  took  the  field  in  1914. 

This  doctrine,  sovind  in  itself,  found  a  favour- 
able milieu  for  its  propagation.  The  conditions 
imposing  a  momentary  defensive  upon  France 
still  existed  in  1890-1900,  but  the  army  and  the 
people,  less  and  less  influenced  by  memories  of 
defeat  as  the  years  went  on,  were  chafing  at  the 
Germans'  assumption  of  a  monopoly  of  offensive 
spirit.  And,  more  important  for  once  than 
moral  conditions,  the  material  advances  in 
armament  due  to  smokeless  powder  were  about 
to  place  the  French  Army  in  possession  of  the 
very  weapon  which  was  needed  to  give  effect  to 
the  doctrine. 

The  bases  of  the  doctrine  were  four  aphorisms 


205 


206 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


of  Napoleon  in  which  his  system  of  war  was 
concentrated :  (1)  "  One  can  never  be  too  strong 
at  the  decisive  point "  ;  (2)  "  Engage  every- 
where, and  then  see  "  ;  (3)  "  Be  vulnerable 
nowhere  "  ;  (4)  "  Manoeuvre  only  about  a  fixed 
point."  The  first  of  these  is  in  direct  conflict 
with  the  German  principles  of  lateral  expansion 
and  equal  density  at  all  points  at  the  moment 
of  crisis.  As  we  have  seen,  the  German  view 
was  that  men  over  and  above  the  number  re- 
quired for  maintaining  one  firing  line  could  not 
usefully  be  put  into  action  in  one  area.     The 


after  an  interval  of  years  and  controversy,  by 
the  British  General  Staff,  whose  definition  of 
the  assaiilt  as  the  "  culmination  of  gradually 
increasing  pressure  "  on  a  selected  portion  of  the 
enemy's  line  may  be  taken  as  one  of  the  best 
expressions  of  the  principle.  This  phrase 
is  a  definite  assertion  that  greater  pressiire 
(subjectively)  should  be  exercised  at  some 
points  than  at  others,  and  that  the  greatest 
pressure  of  all  should  be  applied  at  a  chosen 
point.  The  principle  may  be  represented 
diagrammatical  ly   thus,  each    line    representing 


French,  on  the  contrary,  sought  to  reproduce, 
with  all  necessary  modifications,  the  Napoleonic 
blow  of  concentrated  thousands  upon  a  selected 
point,   and  in  that  view  they  were  followed. 


FRENCH    SOLDIER    WITH   NEW 

SERVICE    EQUIPMENT. 

[Topical. 


fighting  troops  at  the  standard  minimum 
density  and  the  point  chosen  for  attack  being 
opposite  the  left  centre. 

The  corollary  of  this  principle  was  the  notion 
of  the  "  general  reserve  "  as  a  separate  body  ; 
in  French  practice  this  body  was  over  one-third, 
and  in  British  "  at  least  half  "  (in  some  cases) 
of  the  total  available  force.  Now,  opponents  of 
the  "  new  French  "  theory  could  argue  plausibly 
enough  that  nothing  like  this  proportion  of 
force  coiild  be  reserved  while  the  rest  was  called 
upon  for  days  together  to  sustain  the  whole 
fiiry  of  the  German  onset.  They  coiild  point  to 
frequent  instances  in  Napoleon's  own  campaigns 
and  elsewhere  in  which  the  decisive  attack  at 
the  selected  point  was  delivered  by  a  compara- 
tively smaU  portion  of  the  forces  on  the  ground, 
the  rest  having  been  used  up  in  holding  and 
wearing  down  the  enemy.  And  when,  as 
sometimes  happened  on  manceu\Tes,  the  Napo- 
leonic forms  as  well  as  the  Napoleonic  idea  were 
used,  they  could  carry  all  level-headed  soldiers 
with  them  in  denouncing  as  absurd  a  theory 
which  asserted  that  masses  of  men  shoulder  to 
shoulder  and  line  upon  line  could  live  for  five 
minutes  imder  the  fire  of  modem  weapons. 
They  could  assert,  moreover,  that  superiority 
of  fire  was  essential  to  success,  and  ask  in  what 
way  the  rear  lines  (other  than  those  used 
as  reservoirs  to  replace  casualties)  could  con- 
tribute to  the  obtaining  of  this  superiority. 
But  what  these  critics  failed  to  see 
was  the  fact  that  it  w6is  not  their  own 
type  of  battle  at  all  that  was  intended  to 
be  produced.  Svibject  to  the  adoption  of 
suitable    formations — ^which,  as  we    have  just 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAB. 


207 


FRENCH    ARTILLERY. 
A    75    mm.  Gun  en  route. 


[Rt'ord  Press. 


observed,  were  not  always  seen  on  manceuvres — 
none  of  the  criticisms  summarized  in  the  above 
lines  will  bear  close  examination.  The  remedy 
for  absorption  of  force  in  the  wearing -down 
engagement  lay  in  the"  gre0.t  principle  of 
"  economy  of  force."  If  the  effective  density 
with  modem  arms  was  ,one  rifle  to  the  yard 
{plvs  reservoirs)  the  front  of  an  army  fighting 
on  the  French  principle  was  just  as  capable  of 
resistance  as  that  of  an  opponent  fighting  on 
the  German,  and  every  man  economized  in  tho 
non -decisive  areas  was  a  man  more  for  the 
general  reserve,  or  the  "  mass  of  manoeuvre,"  as 
the  French  more  correctly  termed  it.  Further, 
field  fortification  was  an  aid  to  economy  of 
force  that  Napoleon  had  never  enjoyed.* 

Rough  field  defences  had  enabled  Lee  at 
Richmond  (1862)  and  Chancellorsville  (1863) 
to  deliver  crushing  blows  with  his  mass  of 
manoeuvre  while  the  rest  of  the  line  was  held 
by  an  absolutely  trifling  force,  and  this  lesson 
at  least  w^as  learned  by  Europe  from  a  war  which 
it  had  been  fashionable  to  call  a  conflict  of 
armed  mobs.  In  short,  the  very  factors  which 
were  supposed  to  authorize  and  compel  the 
Germans  to  expand  laterally  equally  allowed 
French  and  British  generals  to  form  a  sub- 
stantial "  mass  of  manoeuvre  "  in  rear  of  the 
front — or  elsewhere,  for  the  Napoleonic'  attack 
might  be  delivered  either  on  the  centre  or  the 
flanlcs,  and  indeed  under  modern  conditions 
(size  of  armies  and  length  of  fronts)  the  latter 
was  the  more  likely  alternative. 

But  there  was  this  vital  difference  between  the 
envelopment  as  conceived  in  Germany  and  the 
flank    attack    as    conceived    in    France.     The 


•Owing  to  the  time  and  labour  required  in  his  day  for  the  con- 
struction of  works  that  had  to  present  a  material  barrier  to  assault 
and  not  fimply  a  certain  amouiit  of  cover  for  riflemen  as  is  the  case 
nowadavs. 


former  was,  as  we  know,  based  upon  a  pre- 
conceived idea  and  a  prearranged  programme 
while  the  latter  was  initiated  not  in  the  phase 
of  strategic  concentration,  but  subsequent  to 
contact.  For  the  Germans  the  "  zone  of 
manoeuvre "  was  the  open  country  in  front 
of  their  advanced  guards;  for  the  French 
that  term  implied  the  zone  behind  them,  in 
which  the  •'  mass  of  manoeuvre  "  could  move 
freely.  It  is  in  this,  and  its  consequences 
upon  tho  battlefield,  that  we  seem  to  find  the 
answer  to  those  opponents  of  the  French 
doctrine,  who  asserted  that,  superiority  of  fire 
being  essential,  no  man  was  being  usefully  em- 
ployed while  he  did  not  contribute  to  that  result. 
Napoleon  himself  said  that  fire  is  everything. 
But  superiority  of  fire  in  his  sense  was  a  local 
and  temporary,  but  overwhelming,  accom- 
paniment, and  not  a  preparation,  of  the  decisive 
attack.  This  being  so,  the  decisive  attack  was, 
as  the  British  regulations  above  quoted  say, 
a  culmination.  How,  then,  was  to  be  obtained 
the  increment  of  fire  power  that  would  make 
this  general  reserve,  engaged  after  contact, 
effective,  given  the  fact  that  along  tlie  whole 
front  one  rifle  per  yard  and  a  proportion  of 
guns  were  already  in  action  ? 

The  answer  is  iii  the  material  advances 
above  alluded  to — viz.,  the  coming  of  the  time 
shrapnel.  In  Napoleon's  day,  with  short- 
range  muskets,  'he  prelude  of  the  smashing 
"  decisive  attack  '  Mas  the  launching  of  a  mass 
of  field  batteries  which  galloped  up  to  a  range 
at  which,  immune  from  bullets,  they  could 
deliver  their  terrible  "  case "  and  "  grape" 
shot.  Often  a  portion  of  the  enemy's  line  was 
so  thoroughly  destroyed  that  the  assaulting 
infantry  marched  into  it  with  their  arms  at  the 
slope.     But  the  coming  of  the  infantry  rifle 


]> 


208 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


FRENCH  ARTILLERY  CROSSING  A  ROAD. 


presently  forbade  the  gvins  to  drive  up  to  case 
ranges,  and  the  part  of  artillery  in  the  attack 
was  for  a  long  time  insignificant.  Even 
in  1870,  effective  as  was  the  Prussian 
field  artillery,  its  role  was  simply  the  pre- 
paration of  the  attack  by  methodical 
bombardment  with  common  shell.*  To  cover 
the  assault,  as  distinct  from  preparing  it, 
artillery  had  to  reproduce  the  effect  of  case-shot 
with  some  long-range  projectUe.  This  pro- 
jectile, of  British  origin,  was  the  shrapnel 
with  time  fuse.  For  technical  reasons  which 
cannot  here  be  discussed  no  satisfactory 
time  fuse  could  be  designed  for  use  in  modem 
rifled  guns  for  many  years  after  the  introduction 
of  the  latter.  Nor  was  the  rapidity  of  fire  that 
was  needed  to  cover  the  Napoleonic  attack 
feasible  at  the  new  long  ranges  imtU  the  gun 
itself  (or  rather  its  carriage)  had  been  revolu- 
tionized. This  was  achieved  by  French  de- 
signers in  1897,  and  with  the  appearance  of  the 
famous  "  canon  de  75 "  Napoleon's  tactics 
came  to  their  own  again. 

The  increment  of  fire-power  being  thus  ob- 
tained, the  French  doctrine  formulated  for 
tactics  by  General  Langlois,  even  before  the 
introduction  of  the  "  75,"  was  placed  on  secure 
ground.  But  though  the  Napoleonic  principle 
be  admitted,  it  still  remains  to  be  seen  whether 
the  proper  point  for  its  application  can  be  dis- 
cerned, and,  if  so,  on  what  grounds. 

This  brings  us  to  the  second  point  of  doctrine, 
"  engage  everywhere,  and  then  see,"  a  point 
upon  which  there  was  almost  as  much  contro- 


•Owing  to  the  technical  deficiencies  of  the  German  giai  (already 
de<lt  with  in  a  previous  chapter)  many  traces  of  1870  procedure 
stiil  lincered  in  1014. 


versy  as  over  the  first — with  which,  of  coiirse, 
it  is  integrally  connected.  The  theory  was  that, 
information  having  been  obtained  from  the 
cavalry  and  other  sources  sufficient  to  define 
the  enemy's  limits — ^more  was  not  expected — 
the  troops  told  off  to  the  "  engagement "  (as 
the  French  "  Field  Service  Regulations "  of 
1913  called  it)  would  advance  and  engage  him 
wherever  found.  A  general  line  of  contact 
would  thus  be  formed,  upon  which  the  French 
advanced  guards  would  seek  to  press  sufficiently 
hard  to  compel  the  enemy  to  develop  his  forces. 
This  "  engagement  "  might  take  days,  perhaps 
a  week  or  more,  and  it  would  impose  on  citizen- 
soldiers  of  a  sensitive  race  a  most  severe  test 
of  endurance  and  solidity.  Many  critics  indeed 
asserted  that  the  Napoleonic  battle  would  break 
down  on  this  weakness  alone  if  on  no  other. 
But  it  is  fair  to  point  out  that  even  in  the  German 
war-theory  much  the  same  strain  would  be  im- 
posed on  the  men  concerned.  The  only  differ- 
ence which  told  against  the  French  lay  in  the 
fact  that  to  carry  out  the  mission  of  "  engage- 
ment "  the  troops  would  have  to  make  ceaseless 
local  attacks  in  order  to  wear  down  the  enemy 
and  compel  him  to  feed  his  firing  line,  whereas 
in  the  case  of  the  German  doctrine  the  infantry 
at  least  was  (in  the  interests  of  timing)  kept 
out  of  action  until  the  general  advance  sounded. 
This  was  evidently  not  a  small  disadvantage 
against  the  French.  But  it  must  be  assumed 
that  the  French  generals  knew  their  country- 
men, and  it  is  the  fact  that  though  the  doctrine 
had  in  recent  years  been  subjected  to  a  good 
deal  of  criticism,  this  particular  part  of  it  was 
made  an  article  of  faith  by  the  1913  edition  of 
the  "  Service  en  Campagne,"  above  quoted. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR, 


209 


Granted  the  necessary  solidity,  then  the 
course  of  the  battle  would  go  on  from  engage- 
ment to  serious  frontal  fighting  with  attack  and 
counter-attack,  and  thus  the  fighting  itself 
jvould,  by  cutting  out,  one  after  the  other, 
the  alternative  hypotheses  that  had  been 
formed  as  to  the  enemy's  grouping,  afford 
enough  evidence  for  the  timely  placing  of  the 
"  mass  of  mancBuvre."  At  the  proper  moment 
the  battle  would  in  the  environs  of  the  selected 
area  grow  in  intensity  by  fresh  feeding  of  the 
firing  line,  until  in  the  selected  area  itself 
it  would  culminate  in  a  fierce  attack  by  every 
available  man  and  gun  of  the  reserve,  the 
men  advancing  a,s  fast  as  possible,  halting  to 
fire  as  little  as  they  could  help,  and  covered  by 
an  appalling  rain  of  time  shrapnel  from  every 
g\in  that  could  be  brought  to  bear.  This  is 
the  phase  tersely  described  by  Napoleon  as 
the  evenement. 

But,  as  Napoleon  remarked,  all  this  requires 
im  peu  d'art  et  quelqiies  evenements.  Germans 
excepted,  there  were  few  soldiers  who  denied 
the  decisive  effect  of  this  attack,  if  it  got  home, 
for  when  you  break  the  enemy's  centre  you 
turn  two  flanks  and  roll  them  up  outwards. 
Controversy,  however,  never  reached  finality, 
even  in  France,  as  to  the  peu  d'art.  As  we 
have  seen,  the  Germa,n  doctrine  was  wholly 
destitute  of  arts,  and  the  question  was,  Was  it 
practicable,  with  modern  armies,  to  finesse 
with  men's  lives  ?  Was  the  moral  of  the  citizen- 
soldier  such  that  he  would  calmly  give  his  life 
in  a  fight  which  he  knew  to  be  a  non-decisive 
part  of  the  ensemble  ?  Moreover,  allowing  for 
the  characteristic  "  emptiness  of  the  battle- 
field"  due  to  the  use  of  smokeless  powder,  and 
for  the  consequent  difficiilty  of  distinguishing 


between  false  positions  and  real,  advanced  lines 
and  main,  was  it  certain  that  any  tentative, 
non -decisive  engagement  of  forces  would  either 
reveal  or  pin  the  opponent  ?  To  these  ques- 
tions the  answers  were,  if  not  exactly  negative, 
at  least  doubtful.  Accordingly  it  was  laid 
down  that  every  attack  was  locally  a 
"  decisive  "  attack,  that  no  troops  should  be 
put  into  action  for  any  other  purpose  than  to 
close  with  the  enemy,  and  that  the  great 
Napoleonic  evenement  must  be,  as  the  British 
regulations  above-mentioned  say,  the  culmina- 
tion of  gradually  increasing  pressure.  But  in 
that  case,  bearing  in  mind  that  the  preliminary 
fighting  would  take  days  and  the  placing  of 
the  "  mass  of  manoeuvre "  yet  more  days, 
would  national  short-service  troops  be  capable 
of  fighting  time  after  time  on  ground  where 
they  had  failed  once,  twice,  and  thrice  ? 
Although  in  fact  the  French  regulations  of  1913 
accepted  the  "  engagement  "  for  good  or  evil, 
still  these  risks  were  evident  enough  to  make 
it  desirable  to  ensure  in  every  other  way  possible 
the  freedom  of  action  of  the  commander  who 
disposes  of  the  mass  of  manoeuvre.  Tliis  was 
sought  in  two  ways,  defined  by  the  two  remain- 
ing Napoleonic  aphorisms  that  we  have  quoted 
— "  be  vulnerable  nowhere  "  and  "  manoeuvre 
only  about  a  fixed  point."  Freedom  of  action 
the  Germans  expected  to  obtain  by  stunning  or 
dazing  their  opponent.  Not  so  the  French, 
who  held  that  only  positive  freedom  secviredby 
means  within  his  own  control-  was  of  any  use 
to  the  commander.  But  before  stating  these 
means   in   general    terms*    let   us    understand 


•The  expanded  theory  and  the  executive  detail  may  be  best 
studied  in  the Principes  de  laGuerre  of  General  Foch,  who  in  1914 
conunanded  the  Nancy  Corps. 


FRENCH    ARTILLERY.    Placing  in  position  a  75  mm.  Gun. 


210 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


what  we  mean  by  freedom  of  action.     It  is 
freedom    to    carry    out    an    intention    without 
hostile  interference.     The   later   the   intention 
is   formed   the   more   serious   the   risk  of   the 
interference  with  it,  and  the  larger    the    de- 
tachments      that       must      be      placed      as 
advanced  guards,  flank  guards,  and  rearguards 
to    prevent  it,  the    smaller,  accordirxgly,    will 
be     the     force     available     for     carrying     out 
the  intention  itself  when  formed.     It  was  the 
tendency   to   wait  for   too   many   data  before 
taking  a  definitive  resolution  that  gave  rise  to 
the  criticisms  of  the  doctrine  which  arose  within 
the  French  Army  itself  about  1910.    Nearly  all  of 
these  alleged  that  in  the  attempt  to  be  "vulner- 
aVjle   nowhere  "    French  generals  were  far  too 
lavis  h   in  the  use   of   protective   detachments. 
Further,  with  the  million -armies  of  the  present 
day,  action  taken  cannot  become  effective  until 
a  period  of  days  has  elapsed,  and  if  the  army, 
already   in   contact  with  the  foe,  is  not  to  be 
overstrained,   it  must  be  taken  very  early — 
practically    on    the    first    reasonable    data  to 
hand. 

The  roost  dangeroiis  case  of  infringed  Uberty 
is  that  which  occurs  when  an  army  is  caught  in 
a  state  of  "  inevitable  unreadiness  "*  half- 
concentrated,  over-dispersed  in  rest  quarters, 
and  so  on.  In  this  case  almost  any  proportion 
of  detachments  from  main  body  is  justified — 
witness  the  placing  of  no  less  than  six  French 
frontier  army  corps  permanently  on  a  war 
footing  in  peace  time  in  1913.  And  even  so, 
the  commander  is  raxely  able  to  wait  upon 
events     before     conuritting     himself     to    an 

•This  aspect  of  the  question  Is  dealt  with  at  length  in  Major- 
Gieneral  Aylmer's  work  "  Protection.'* 


"  intention,"  and  that  intention  as  often  as  Dot 
is  simply  one  of  self-defence. 

None  of  this,  however,  alters  the  fact  that  the 
French  doctrine,  construed  reasonably,  does — 
and  in  war  did — give  the   only   guarantee   of 
freedom  of  action  thar  can  really  be  depended 
upon.     Whether  in  certain  cases  freedom  is  not 
bought  at  too  high  a  price    is  doubtfvd.     But 
in    general    the    doctrine    as     formulated    by 
General   Bonnal    and    General   Foch     held   its 
own  against  criticism,  and  the  events  of  the 
war  of  1914  showed  that  almost  any  sacrifice 
of  men  and  ground  was  better  than  the  forcing 
of  the  commander's  hand.     An  initial  defensive, 
coupled  with  the  preservation  of  the  army  at 
all  costs,  was  imposed  upon  France  by  broader 
political     and     military     circumstances.     Un- 
official criticism  might  question  the  application 
of    the   principle   of    self-contained    protective 
detachments,  but  it  could  not  alter  the  fact  of 
their  necessity,  nor  of  their  value,  when  rightly 
employed.     For  in  France  the  defensive  was 
regarded    as    the    auxiliary    of    the    offensive. 
The  mission  of  the  protective  detachments  was 
not  simply  to  protect,  but  to  offer  a  bait.     Their 
authors  confidently  expected  that  by  rearguard- 
like  fighting  they  could  not  only  gain  time  for 
offensive   dispositions   to   be   made   elsewhere, 
but  also  provoke  the  enemy  into  deploying  in 
a  wrong  direction,  draw  him  across  the  front  of 
the  main  body,  and  generally  play  the  part  of 
will   o'   the  wisp.     It  is  questionable — and  it 
was  questioned  by  the  younger  critics — whether 
these  mancBuvres,  applicable  enough  to  the  old 
small  armies,  had  not  something  of  the  character 
of  minor  chicanes  about  them  when  regarded 


FRENCH     PATROL     GUARDING    RAILWAY    LINE. 


^Record  Puss. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY     OF    THE     WAB, 


211 


ZOUAVES. 


[Topical 


from  the  point  of  view  of  the  million-army. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  certain  that 
smokeless  powder  and  long-ranging  weapons 
have  made  rearguard  actions.  Smokeless 
powder  and  long-ranging  weapons  have  enabled 
a  rearguard  to  keep  at  a  distance  the  pursuing 
enemy  in  a  way  which  was  in  former  times 
impossible. 

The  offensive  coxmterpart  of  the  protective 
detachment  (couverture)  is  the  "  strategic  ad- 
vanced guard  " — another  focus  of  controversy. 
Its  role  is  that  defined  in  the  last  of  the  aphorisms 
which  we  have  used  as  our  texts, "  Manoeuvre 
only  about  a  fixed  point." 

Never  officially  recognized  by  the  French 
regulations,  though  partially  accepted  by 
the  British  and  Italian,  the  strategic  advanced 
guard  wets  nevertheless  the  corner-stone  of  the 
"  New  French  "  doctrine.  It  was  a  very  large 
force  of  all  arms — in  Napoleon's  campaigns 
an  army  corps,  in  our  own  times  a  whole  army — 
which  preceded  the  main  body  by  as  many 
days'  marches  as  its  own  capacity  for  fighting 
unaided  permitted.  It  was  handled  strate- 
gically on  the  same  principles  as  the  famous 
Prussian  advanced  guards  of  1870  were  handled 
tactically,  with  the  exception  that  in  the  hands 
of  a  first-class  leader  like  Lannes  it  never  com- 
mitted itself  so  deeply  as  to  involve  the  main 
army  in  its  affair  without  direct  orders  to  that 
effect  from  the  Emperor.     In  the  absence  of 


such  orders,  it  was  merely  a  potential  pro- 
tective detachment,  latent  if  the  enemy  did 
nothing  and  active  if  he  tried  to  advance. 
But  its  proper  purpose  was  very  different. 
It  was  with  its  cavalry*  to  find,  and  with  its 
infantry  and  artillery  to  engage,  the  enemy's 
main  body,  thereby  giving  the  Emperor  the 
'■  fixed  point "  upon  which  to  build  up  his 
manoeusTe.  It  had,  further,  by  hard  fighting, 
and  if  necessary  by  sacrificing  itseK,  to  hold  the 
enemy's  attention  and  effort  for  the  time 
needed  for  that  manoeuvre  without  support 
from  the  "  mass  of  manoeuvre,"  every  regiment 
of  which  the  Emperor  jealously  reserved. 

In  the  great  majority  of  cases  the  sacrifice 
was  not  in  vain-  There  are  few  of  Napoleon's 
victories  which  are  without  any  trace  of  the 
idea,  and  when  it  failed  it  was  because  the 
movements  of  the  main,  body,  by  reason  of 
weather  or  unforeseen  emergencies,  were  de- 
layed beyond  the  calculated  time. 

The  action  was  perfectly  familiar  to  the 
Prussians,  for  it  had  not  escaped  Clausewitz's 
observation, t  and  one  of  the  most  magnificent 
examples  of  its  working  had  been  given  by 
Constantin  von  Alvensleben,  when  with  the 
3rd  Corps  on  August  16,  1870,  he  engaged  the 
whole  of  Bazaine's  army  single-handed  in 
order  to  prevent  it  from  marching  away  until 

•Often  two  or  more  divisions. 

tThough  Clausewitz  was  {ar  from  suspecting  its  importance. 


> 


212 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


Prince  Frederick  Charles  should  have  gathered 
his  scattered  army  for  a  decisive  blow  upon  it. 
But  the  idea  had  been  deliberately  rejected 
in  toto  by  the  more  modern  Germans,  who 
disbelieved  in  the  power  of  modern  armies, 
fighting  at  long  range,  to  fix  one  another,  and 
in  the  power  of  modern  unprofessional  troops  to 
fight  at  a  sacrifice.  How  little  they  expected 
from  the  "  combat  of  fixation  "  may  be  gauged 
from  the  fact,  already  alluded  to,  that  they 
engaged  their  artillery  alone  in  the  phase  of 
battle  to  which  it  applied,  keeping  their  in- 
fantry back  until  the  real  general  attack  was 
ripe.  The  only  effective  fixation  they,  held 
was  the  previous  overpowering  of  the  enemy's 
will  by  the  speed  and  power  of  their  strategic 
advance.  In  short,  they  contributed  nothing, 
either  by  way  of  objection  or  acceptance,  to 
the  controversy  which  centred  on  the  strategic 
advanced  guard.  The  whole  "  order  of  ideas  " 
was  different. 

The  application  of  the  theory  to  the  first 
phase  of  a  Franco-German  war  was  admitted 
to  be  difficult  if  not  impossible,  owing  to  the 
fact  that  the  armies  were  almost  in  face  of  one 
another  at  the  outset,  whereas  in  proportion  to 
their  length,  and  therefore  to  the  time-relations 
of  manoeuvres  based  upon  the  advanced  guard, 
the  main  bodies  should  have  been  separated  by 


a  hundred  miles  or  so  for  an  army  of  three  or  four 
corps  to  have  elbow  room.for  action  as  strate- 
gic advanced  guard.  It  was  when  the  armies 
had  fallen  apart  again  after  a  first  cUnch  that 
this  organ  wovild  come  into  play,  and  if  at  that 
point  the  huge  masses  became  divided  up  into 
smaller  bodies,  each  with  its  own  theatre  of  war 
and  set  of  tasks,  Auerstadts  and  Friedlands 
would   become   possible. 

Intimately  connected  with  the  theory  of  the 
strategic  advanced  guard  (though  it  dated  from 
the  piirely  defensive  period  of  French  military 
policy)  was  the  idea,  which  had  many  ardent 
supporters  and  many  fierce  opponents,  of  fixing 
the  concentration  area  of  the  French  armies 
well  back  from  the  frontier  and  somewhat 
to  a  flank — at  Dijon,  for  example.  Many  of  the 
partisans  of  the  strategic  advanced  guard 
considered  that  this  retired  concentration, 
coupled  with  skilful  handling  of  the  (then) 
three  frontier  corps  as  a  strategic  advanced 
guard  and  strategic  rear  guard  by  turns,  would 
infalhbly  result  in  the  Germans  being  drawn  so 
far  westward  from  Lorraine  as  to  be  cut  off  by 
the  offensive  from  Dijon.  But  neither  General 
Bonnal  himself,  nor  Langlois  nor  Foch  (both  oi 
whom  commanded  the  Nancy  Army  Corps) 
seem  to  have  shared  in  this  opinion,  since,  as 
Moltke    remarked    a    propos    of    the    Silesian 


FRENCH     CYCLISTS'     COMPANY. 


iTopieck 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


213 


40  miles 


Diagram  showing  the  "lozenge"  with  the  first  corps  used  as  strategic 
advance-guard.     (See  pp.  273-4.) 


214 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


concentration  of  1866,  "  one  does  not,  in  practice, 
abandon  rich  provinces."  If,  however, 
the  main  armies  of  the  Germans  were  to 
pass  through  Belgium,  a  broad  belt  of  country- 
would  be  open  between  the  initial  concentra- 
tion areas,  and  in  that  belt  a  great  French 
advanced  guard  might  well  operate  with  a  view 
to  provoking  the  Germans  into  a  premature 
Entfcdtung  in  a  more  or  less  doubtful  direction. 

In    combination    with    these    protective    or 
provocative     detachments,     the     main     army 


itself  was  to  be  grouped,  according  to  the 
accepted  doctrine,  in  a  deep  lozenge  formation 
similar  to  that  which  Napoleon  adopted  in  the 
Jena  campaign  of  1806. 

This  great  lozenge,  preceded  by  its  strategic 
advanced  guard,  would  advance  in  the  direction 
where  the  enemy  was  a  priori  most  likely 
to  be  found.  If  the  advanced  guard  came  into 
contact,  the  head  of  the  lozenge  would  reinforce 
it  on  one  flank  within  48  hours,  the  flanks  of  it 
would  come  up  into  line  within  four  or  five  days, 


^ 

^     ^ 

,..^ ^^ 

r^ 

^       ^ 

■  1  ■ 

HZI      }-■ ^ 

^    Q 

1 

P_i_, 

\ 

1 
1 

lozenge  with  Strategic 
advanced  guard 

Lozenge  changing  direction 
on  its  own  ground. 

■^- — 

\ 

9  /o  i 

f    /            1 

9 

1 
\ 

Lozenge  manoeuvrinq  about 
a  Fixed  point  Formed^by  the 
strategic  advanced  guard. 

The  "  lozenge  "  form-^tion  and  its  uses. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAB. 


215 


FRENCH     MOTOR    AMBULANCE. 


IRecord  Press. 


and  the  rear  group  would  be  still  in,  hand.  If 
the  advanced  guard  missed  its  target,  or  only 
came  into  touch  with  its  extreme  flank,  then 
the  rdle  of  advanced  guard  would  fall  to  one  of 
the  flank  masses  of  the  lozenge  itself,  and  the 
original  advanced  guard  would  become  part  of 
the  mass  of  manoeuvre.  The  virtue  of  the 
lozenge  formation,  in  a  word,  is  its  capacity 
for  changing  direction — a  capacity  which  the 
long  deployed  line  of  the  Germans  almost 
entirely  lacked.  And  the  virtue  of  the  strategic 
advanced  guard,  from  whichever  side  of  the 
lozenge  it  emerged,  was  '  that  it  provided  a 
fixed  point  about  which  this  supple  mass  could 
manoeuvre. 

Of  all  criticisms  of  the  strategic  advanced 
guard,  none  was  as  serious  as  that  which 
pointed  out  that  its  flanks  would  be  overlapped 
by  superior  forces  before  the  head  of  the  lozenge 
could  act.  This  danger  was  admitted,  but 
minimized  by  the  allotment  to  it  of  almost  all 
available  cavalry,  which  by  the  combination  of 
its  fan-wise  reconnaissance,  its  fire  power,  and 
its  shock  action  would  prolong  the  front  to 
either  flank  sufficiently  far  to  compel  the  enemy 
to  make  long  turning  movements  and  so  to 
waste  the  critical  hours. 

As  compared  with  its  defensive  counterpart, 
the  protective  detachment,  the  strategic 
advanced  guard,  whose  very  mission  it  was  to 
affront  superior  numbers  of  the  enemy,  un- 
doubtedly ran  more  risks,  since  it  wr  s  eff  ^ct  as 


well  as  endiirance  for  a  given  time  that  was 
expected  of  it,  and  it  coiild  not  break  off  the 
engagement  so  readily.*  On  the  other  hand, 
the  troops  composing  it  did  enjoy  all  the  moral 
advantages  of  the  sharp  offensive,  whereas 
those  of  protective  detachments  were  condemned 
to  the  disillvisionments  of  retreat.  These 
differences  of  principle  and  intent  were  explained, 
so  feir  as  the  French  Army  was  concerned,  in 
the  regulations  of  1913,  which  made  it  clear 
that  the  detachment  with  a  separate  temporary 
mission  was  a  self-contained  force  while  an 
advanced  guard  was  integrally  connected  with 
its  main  body,  since  "  it  cannot  be  admitted 
that  a  leader  would  send  troops  against  the 
enemy  without  his  having  the  intention  to 
fight." 

The  accompanying  diagram  shows  how  a 
strategic  advanced  guard  extended  its  flanks 
for  protection  in  this  manner  (formations  and 
distances  being  of  course  no  more  than  indica- 
tion of  the  general  tendencies).  It  illustrates 
also  how,  instead  of  being  a  self-contained  body 
additional  to  the  lozenge,  as  at  one  time  it  was 
conceived  to  be,  it  has  become  simply  an  ad- 
vanced portion  of  the  head  of  it,  specially  dis- 
posed for  its  special  functions  and  dangers. 

It  shows,  moreover,  that  in  practice  there 
was  no  real  discrepancy  between  the  advanced 


♦German  advanced  guards,  as  we  have  seen,  were  deliberately 
kept  small  in  order  that  they  should  not  be  tempted  by  any  con- 
sciousness of  their  own  strength  t)  engage  at  ao  inopportuns 
moment. 


216 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


guard  and  lozenge  type  of  strategic  advance 
and  that  which  Colonel  de  Grandmaison  (the 
intellectual  leader  of  the  revolt  against  the 
tendency  to  mvdtiply  advanced  guards  and 
protective  detachnxents)  proposed,  viz.,  a  chain 
of  independent  masses,  each  disposed  internally 
according  to  its  own  needs  in  echelon,  lozenge 
or  otherwise,  and  all  together  forming  a  long 
line  with  reserves  massed  behind  at  one  point 
of  it.  The  Grandmaison  conception  was  better 
suited  to  the  management  of  the  huge  armies 
of  to-day  than  a  crude  reproduction, 
on  five  times  the  scale,  of  Napoleon's 
"  battalion  square  of  200,000  men."  But 
it  shared  the  characteristic  principles  and 
incorporated  the  characteristic  forms  of  the 
Napoleonic  method,  of  which  indeed  it  was 
simply  a  special  case.  The  outstanding  features 
of  French  tactical  methods  of  course  expressed 
the  same  doctrine.  In  the  battle  as  a  whole, 
fire  superiority  was  not  regarded  as  the  con- 
dition of  success  as  it  was  in  Germany.  On 
the  contrary,  it  became  the  accepted  idea  in 
France  and  in  Great  Britain  that  the  cliief  use 
of  fire  was  to  cover  movement,  and  that  it  was 
but  an  auxiliary  to  the  actual  assault.  Hence 
came  the  characteristic  division  of  the 
attacker's  artillery,  not  "  counter  batteries " 
whose  mission  it  was  to  account  for  the  enemy's 
artillery  and  "  infantry  batteries  "  which  were 
to  support  the  infantry  advance  with  their  full 
fire-power  at  every  stage,  and,  above  all,  in  the 
final  assault.  Hence,  too,  the  development  of 
infantry  formations*  in  close  order  that  could 
live  and  move  in  the  zone  of  hostile  artiUery 
fire  by  fitting  into  even  the  smallest  covered 
lines  of  approach  and  need  only  extend  for 
firo  action  of  their  own  at  the  very  limit  of  cover. 
Hence  also  the  "  burst  of  rapid  fire  "  from  rifle 
and  from  gun  in  which  the  British  Army  ex- 
celled friend  and  foe  alike.  And  hence,  the 
tremendovis  violence  of  the  action  of  the  "mass 
of  manoeuvre  " — its  surprise  effect,   tts  speed, 


•Irregular  lines  of  platoons  or  lialf-platoons  in  fours  or  file 
Cliiiracteristic  also  of  British  infantry  tactics. 


GENERAL     CHEVENET. 
Military  Governor  of  Belfort. 

and  its  overwhelming  weight  of  "  covering 
fire."  Such  a  blow  was  only  possible  when 
enough  data  had  been  obtained  to  ensure  it 
against  being  a  blow  in  the  air,  and  the  advanced 
guards  had  to  pay  for  this  insurance.  It  was 
only  possible  when  the  commander-in-chief  was 
insiired  against  anxieties  in  other  directions, 
and  the  protective  detachments  had  to  ensure 
this  by  resisting  to  the  utmost  limit  of  their 
powers  and  their  ground.  And  it  was  only 
possible  when  all  ranks,  whether  in  the  "  wear- 
ing-down "  engagement  or  in  the  swift  decisive 
attack,  were  imbued  with  the  desire  to  close 
with  the  foe. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


THE  STORY  OF  LIEGE, 


The  "  Birmingham  "  of  Belgium — ^Its  Stormy  History — Physical  and  ABCHiTECTunAii 
Beauties — Belgium's  Bavarian  Queen — Germany's  Checked  Plan — First  Attack  on 
LiteGE — ^Misemployment  of  Massed  Infantry — Skilful  Belgian  Defence- — ^The  Decisive 
Bayonet — ^The  Error  of  German  Discipline — Strength  and  Weakness    of    Li^ge — ^Facts 

ABOUT    THE    FORTS SECRET    GERMAN    WORK    IN    LlfcCE GENERAL    LemAN'S     NaRROW     EscAPB 

Massacre  of  LiJige  Citizens — ^Disingenuous  Statement  from  Berlin — International  Law 
Misapplied — ^Dishonesty  of  the  German  Case — Parallel  of  the  Self-Righteous  Burglar — 
Golden  Opportunity  Neglected  by  the  Germans — Evidence  of  Atrocities  at  LiJcge — 
Excuse  for  Belgium — General  von  Emmich  and  His  Task — ^Value  of  Initial  Belgian 
Successes — Terrible  Slaughter  of  Germans — Three  Army  Corps  Brought  to  a  Standstill 
— Inexorable  German  Advance — More  Brilliant  Belgian  Successes — Cross  of  the  Legion 
OF  Honour  for  Lii^ge — ^Records  of  Individual  Gallantry — Nothing  Availed  against  the 
Big  Guns — Difficulty  of  their  Transport — Collapse  of  the  Forts — ^Messrs.  Krupp's 
Triumph — Summary  of  the  Siege — ^Playing  Hide-and-Seek  with  Shells — Destruction  of 
Buildings — Occupation  of  the  Town — ^Unique  Position  thus  Created — ^Ill-founded  Re- 
joicings IN  Berlin  and  Mistaken  Hopes  in  London — In  Spite  of  Checks  German  Advance 
Irresistible — LiIoge  and  Namur  Compared — The  Value  of  Ring  Fortresses — General 
Leman  "  Plays  the  Game  "—Moral  and  Political  Effects  of  Belgian  Success  in  Resistance 
— Destruction  of  Forts  and  Capture  of  General  Leman — Pathetic  and  Gallant  Finale — 
Testimony  of  British  Statesmen. 


THE  usual  description  of  Liege  as 
the  "  Birmingham  of  Belgium " 
gave  one  no  idea  of  the  peaceful 
beauty  of  the  town  with  its  numerous 
spires  and  spacious  streets,  fringed  with  bovile- 
vards  spreading  outwards  from  the  wide  waters 
of  the  Meuse  toward  the  undulating  country  with 
its  mt  ny  lovely  woods,  the  ha\m.ts  of  butterflies 
and  birds.  Between  these  were  situated  the 
forts,  like  great  iron  ant-hills,  each  cupola  crown- 
ing the  smooth  glacis  on  which  on  the  night  of 
August  5  tl  e  German  dead  lay  in  high  ridges 
like  the  jettam  of  the  tide  upon  a  beach,  each 
ridge  indicating  the  high-water  mark  to  which 
the  futile  rxish  of  a  wave  of  infantry  had  reached. 
But  as  the  sun  set  peacefully  on  August  3  the 
forts   were   no   more    conspicuous   than    usual 


amid  their  picturesque  siirroundings.  They 
were  always  familiar  features  in  a  bird's-eye 
view  of  the  environs  of  Liege,  but  they  did  not 
dominate  the  landscape  ;  and  there  was  little, 
even  in  the  minds  of  the  Liegeois  as  they 
listened  to  the  music  of  St.  Barthelemy-'s  evening 
chimes,  to  suggest  that  the  morrow  would  see 
that  landscape  ringed  with  steel  or  that  for 
many  days  the  incessant  thxinder  of  the  guns 
would  be  speaking  to  the  world  of  the  heroism 
and  the  wreckage  of  Liege. 

Indeed,  on  that  close,  hot  evening  at  the 
beginning  of  August  the  wooded  slopes  beyond 
which  the  Germans  were  waiting  for  nightfall 
seemed  to  contain  nothing  more  dangerous  than 
the  magpies  that  flickered  black  and  white  along 
the  margins  of  the  thickets ;  -.and  the  quiet  fields 


217 


218 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


LIEGE. 

The  above,  with  the  illustration  pn  the  opposite  page,  forms  a  panoramic  view  ot  Li^ge  as  it  was,   and  shows 

the  entrance  to  the  Railway  Station. 


around  the  farms  showed  no  worse  enemies  than 
the  family  parties  of  crows  prospectiag  for  early 
walnuts  —  crows  that  would  soon  fatten  on 
horses'  entrails  and  pick  the  eyes  of  men. 

No  seriovis  shadow  of  the  coming  evil  had 
yet  fallen  across  those  fair  hills.  There  had 
been  rumours,  of  course,  and  of  course  the 
troops  were  ready  in  Liege  ;  but  the  contented 
Weilloon  farmer  paid  little  attention  to  rumours 
or  the  activities  of  the  soldiers.  He  hoped 
the  sultry  sunset  did  not  portend  thunder — 
little  dreaming  of  the  thunder  of  the  guns  that 
would  be  in  his  ears  for  many  nights  and  days. 
Perhaps  he  thought,  as  he  looked  over  the 
rolling  fields,  ripe  through  abundant  svmshine 
with  early  crops,  that  the  harvest  of  1914 
would  be  one  that  the  Liegeois  would  remember 
for  many  years.  And  so  indeed  it  was  ;  for  it 
proved  to  be  the  crowning  harvest  of  the  city's 
stormy  prominence  in  history,  passing  back 
for  nearly  1,200  years. 

Liege  made  her  entry  into  the  field  of  political 
history  in  the  year  720,  when,  with  the  consent 


of  Pope  Gregory  the  Second,  the  Bishop  of 
Maestricht  transferred  the  See  from  that 
sleepy  city  to  its  fast-growing  rival  at  the 
junction  of  the  Meuse  and  the  Ourthe.  In  the 
following  century  the  Bishops  of  Liege  added 
to  their  honours  the  titles  of  Princes  of  the 
Empire  and  Dukes  of  Bouillon.  Their  residence 
in  the  city  of  Liege  added  of  course  vastly  to 
its  dignity  and  consequence,  and  their  eccle- 
siastical and  mihtaxy  subordinates  swelled  its 
population  and  fed  its  growing  trade. 

But  there  was  another  side  to  these  benefits. 
The  difference  between  the  lay  and  ecclesiastical 
aristocracy  of  the  •  Middle  Ages  was  often 
merely  skin-deep,  a  matter  of  title  and  costvune 
rather  than  of  nature  or  of  habit  of  life  ;  and 
the  long  list  of  the  Prince -Bishops  of  Liege 
comprised  few  individuals  who  were  not  as 
insolent  in  their  pretensions,  as  sudden  and 
quick  in  quarrel,  as  vindictive  in  revenge,  and 
as  extortionate  as  their  unsanctified  brethren. 
The  history  of  Liege  is  the  story  of  a  long 
struggle   between    the   turbulent   and    liberty- 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


219 


'1^  -^ti. 


1^,  •    ■. 


M   ^^^ 


LIEGE. 

Centre  of  the  town,  and  the  river,  with  a  view  of  the  bridge 
that  was  destroyed. 


loving  citizens  and  their  priestly  oppressors, 
many  of  whom  were  only  able  to  enter  the  city 
either  at  the  head  or  in  the  rear  of  armies  of 
mercenaries.  Revolts  were  frequent  and 
bloody,  and  sometimes  more  or  less  successful ; 
but  on  the  whole  the  Prince-Bishops  of  Liege 
held  their  owti  so  well  that  the  French  historian, 
Jules  Dalhaize,  tells  us  that  even  in  the 
eighteenth  century  they  were'  still  absolute 
rulers,  and  that  Gerard  de  Hoensbroeck,  who 
occupied  the  episcopal  throne  in  1789,  "  knew 
no  other  law  than  his  own  will." 

The  continuance  and  growth  of  the  Prince - 
Bishops'  power  would  indicate  that  most  of 
them  must  have  been  men  of  considerable 
political  talent,  with  a  keen  eye  for  the  winning 
side,  as,  in  the  interminable  quarrels  between 
the  Empire  and  the  Papacy,  they  piirsued  no 
settled  line  of  policy,  but  fought  with  or  against 
the  Holy  See  as  their  personal  interest  tended. 
One  of  them,  Henry  of  Leyden,  Prince -Bishop 
from  1145  to  1164,  followed  Frederick  Bar- 
barossa   to   Italy,    helped   in   the    downfall    of 


Pope  Alexander  III.,  supported  the  Anti-Pope 
Victor,  and  consecrated  his  successor,  Paschal. 
In  strange  contrast  with  rebels  of  this  type 
were  Bishop  Alexander,  who,  deposed  in  1134 
by  Innocent  the  Second,  died  of  shame ;  Al- 
beron  of  Namur,  whose  heart  broke  at  an  angry 
summons  to  the  presence  of  Eugenius  the  Third  ; 
and  Raoul  of  Zeringhen,  who,  admonished  for 
malpractice  by  the  pontifical  legate,  laid  asidb 
his  crozier  and  expiated  his  offences  as  a 
crusader.  Best  known  of  all  to  history  is 
Louis  de  Bourbon,  the  victim  of  the  ferocity 
of  William  de  la  Marck,  "  the  Boar  of  the 
Ardennes.'  Far  from  an  ideal  priest,  worldly, 
luxurious,  and  indolent,  the  courage  and 
dignity  with  which  he  met  his  death  would  have 
earned  pardon  for  much  heavier  offences. 

Amid  all  these  turmoils  Liege  had  flourished 
and  growTi,  and  about  the  year  1400  the  demo- 
cratic element  had  held  its  own  so  well  that  it 
could  be  described  as  "  a  city  of  priests  changed 
into  one  of  colliers  and  armourers."  "  It 
was,"  we  are  told,  "  a  city  that  gloried  in  its 


220 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


STEPS     LEADING     UP    TO     THE    FORTS,     LIEGE.     [Underwood  Sy  Underwood. 


ruptiire  with  the  past,"  but  "  the  past "  rose 
and  reasserted  itself  in  1408,  when  the  Prince- 
Bishop  John  of  Bavaria,  assisted  by  his  cousin, 
John  the  Fearless,  broke  the  forces  of  the 
citizens  and  excluded  them  ruthlessly  from 
power.  A  generation  later  democracy 
triumphed  again,  again  to  be  overthrown, 
this  time  by  Charles  the  Bold  of  Burgundy, 
who,  in  1467,  defeated  the  Liegeois  in  the  field, 
and  reinstated  the .  Bishop  and  his  kinsman, 
the  afore-mentioned  Louis  de  Bourbon.  In  the 
following  year   the  undismayed  burghers  rose 


in  fresh  revolt,  provoked  thereto  by  the  intrigues 
and  promises  of  the  crafty  Louis  XL  of  France, 
Charles's  seeming  friend  and  deadliest  enemy. 
It  was  probably  the  most  triumphant  hour  of 
Charles's  life,  and  the  bitterest  hour  that 
Louis  ever  knew,  when,  in  the  enforced  presence 
and  with  the  extorted  consent  of  the  latter, 
Charles  stormed  Liege,  put  its  inhabitants  to 
indiscriminate  slaughter,  and,  save  for  its 
pillaged  chtirches,  razed  it  to  the  ground. 
It  was  characteristic  of  Charles  that  he  failed 
to    complete    the   political    annexation    of    the 


THE    TIMES    HIS'IORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


221 


principality  he  had  so  frightfully  chastised. 
At  his  death,  nine  years  later,  in  1477,  the  un- 
conquerable spirit  of  the  Walloon  population 
had  already  done  much  to  restore  the  city  to 
its  former  strength,  and  a  single  generation 
sufficed  to  erase  the  last  vestiges  of  her  ruin. 

Liege  passed  practically  unscathed  through 
the  long  agony  of  the  struggle  of  the  Netherlands 
against  Philip  II.  and  the  Duke  of  Alva,  and 
underwent  no  such  calamities  as  those  which 
desolated  the  sister  cities  of  Maastricht,  Brussels, 
and  Antwerp.  She  was  stormed  and  occupied 
by  the  soldiers  of  Louis  XIV.  in  1691,  and  in 
1702  was  occupied  by  the  English  under  Marl- 
borough. Her  occupation  in  1792  by  a  French 
contingent  commanded  by  La  Fayette  con- 
cluded the  tale  of  her  warlike  experiences 
until  the  outbrea.k  of  the  present  struggle. 

In  its  modern  aspect  Liege,  as  the  centre  of 
the  coalmining  industry  of  Eastern  Belgium, 
has  always  exhibited  to  the  traveller,  even  at  a 
distance,  the  signs  of  its  occupation  in  the  pall 
of  smoke  overhead,  to  which  the  countless 
chimneys  of  the  factories  which  the  output  of 
coal  supports  are  constantly  contributing. 
One  of  the  mines  is  the  deepest  in  the  world, 
and  many  others,  now  abandoned,  pass  beneath 
the  city  and  the  river. 

Among  the  chief  industries  for  which  Liege 
has  long  been,  and  will  doubtless  again  be, 
famous  through  the  world  is  the  manufacture 
of  arms  and  weapons  of  all  kinds — congenial 
work,  one  might  suppose,  for  the  quick-witted 
Walloon  people,  who  have  always  in  their 
city's  stormy  history  shown  that  they  know 
how  to  use  weapons  as  well  as  how  to  make 
them.  Perhaps  a  little  over-readiness  in  this 
direction  on  their  part,  forgetting  that  modern 
war  is  confined  to  combatants  only,  offers  some 
explanation,  but  no  excuse,  for  the  savagery 
of  the  German  "  reprisals." 

Besides  the  manufacture  of  arms,  of  which 
there  were  more  than  180  factories,  the  Liege 
zinc  foundries,  engine  factories,  and  cycle  works 
were  all  world-famous,  and  the  zinc  works  of 
Vieille  Montague  were  the  largest  in  existence. 

But  though  this  vast  industrial  activity 
clouded  the  air  above  Liege  with  smoke,  and 
though  wherever  one  looked  upon  the  en- 
circling hills  the  chimneys  and  shafts  of  mines 
were  to  be  seen,  the  town  itself  was  pleasant 
and  well  laid  out,  and  the  surrounding  land- 
scape beautiful. 

Many  of  the  improvements  in  Liege  dated 
from  1905,  when  an  International  Exhibition 
was  held  there  ;  and  in  preparing  the  area  for 
this  the  course  of  the  river  Ourthe,  which  here 
joins  the  Meuse,  had  been  diverted  from  its 


GENERAL    LEMAN, 
The  Gallant  Defender  of  Li^ge. 

[Alfieri. 

old  bed  and  converted  into  the  Canal  de 
Derivation,  the  old  river  course  being  filled  up 
and  added,  with  the  adjoining  land,  to  the 
Exhibition  grounds.  A  fine  park  was  also 
laid  out  on  the  Plateau  de  Cointe,  whence 
the  best  general  view  of  Liege  is  obtained, 
and  several  new  bridges  and  streets  were 
made,  including  the  handsome  and  spacious 
boulevards. 

Another  grand  view  was  obtained  from  the 
Citadel,  an  ancient  and  disused  fort  close  to  the 
north  side  of  the  town,  which  was  built  on  the 
site  of  still  older  fortifications  by  the  Prince - 
Bishop  Maximilian  Henry  of  Bavaria  after  the 
famous  siege  of  Liege  in  1649.  No  doubt  he 
thought  that  he  was  making  the  city  impregnable 
for  ever  ;  but  three  centuries  had  not  passed 
before  the  newer  fortresses,  whose  construction 
relegated  the  Citadel  to  the  level  of  an  antique 
curiosity,  had  themselves  fallen  utterly  before 
the  power  of  modern  guns.  The  position  of  the 
Citadel,  however,  still  remains  commanding, 
and  the  view  therefrom  includes  the  entire 
city,  of  which  all  the  centre  from 
north  to  south  looks  like  a  cluster  of  islands 
between  the  canals  and  winding  rivers, 
as  well  as  the  thickly-wooded  background 
of  the  Ardennes  Mountains  on  the  right,  and 
on  the  left  the  hills  near  Maestricht  in  Holland 
and  the  broad  plains  of  Limburg,  whence  the 
German  armies  crossed  the  frontier  in  three 
streams   at  the   beginning  of   the   great   war. 


222 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAE. 


'  Between  this  distant  historic  landscape  and  the 
near  view  of  Liege,  rising  from  her  ashes,  the 
valleys  of  the  Meuse,  the  Ourthe,  and  the 
Vesdre  diverge,  thickly  dotted  with  populous 
Walloon  villages.  This  had  been  a  favourite 
country  for  German  tourists  and  a  rich  field 
for  German  coilunercial  enterprise ;  but  1914 
wrought  a  change. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  city  another  disused 
fortification.  Fort  Chartreuse,  gave  an  almost 
equally  fine  prospect  from  the  opposite  point 
of  view ;  and  although  the  old  fort  itself  was 
blown  up  by  the  Belgians  during  the  siege  in 
order  that  it  might  not  provide  cover  for  the 
enemy,  the  hill  remained  a  vantage  point  from 
which,  as  far  as  the  ej^e  can  reach  on  either 
hand,  evidence  of  German  devastation  could 
be  seen. 

Before  the  bombardment  the  general  aspect 
of  the  city  was  that  of  a  place  of  parks  and 
pleasure  gardens,  fine  churches  and  spacious 
buildings.  Among  the  latter  the  University, 
by  its  prominence,  became  a  magnet  for  the 
German  shells,  and  though  only  founded  in 
1817  as  the  central  seat  of  learning  for  the 
Walloon  race,  no  priceless  heritage  of  ancient 
days  could  have  been  more  thoroughly  smashed 
and  pulverized. 

The  grand  Palais  de  Justice  also,  with  its 
picturesque  courts  and  vaulted  pillars,  blending 
late  Gothic  and  Renaissance  styles — and  its 
west  wing  used  as  the  Government  House, 
faced  by  pleasure  grounds  and  fountains  on  a 
picturesque  slope — ^was  only  a  product  of 
16th  to  19th  century  genius  ;  and  the  Town  Hall 
only  dated  from  early  in  the  18th  century, 
although  it  contained  pictures  and  tapestries 
of  great  age  and  value. 

But  in  the  Church  of  St.  Jacques,  with  its 
famous  stained -glass  windows,  the  western 
fa9ade  was  nearly  700  years  old,  while  parts  of 
the  Cathedral  Church  of  St.  Paul,  also  con- 
taining beautiful  stained  glass  and  statues, 
dated  back  to  968,  1280,  and  1528.  The  Church 
of  St.  Jean  belonged  to  the  12th,  14th,  and 
18th  centuries,  that  of  St.  Croix  to  the  10th, 
12th,  and  14th,  St.  Martin  to  the  16th,  St. 
Antoine,  with  its  wood  carvings  and  frescoes, 
to  the  13th,  and  St.  Barthelemy  to  the  11th  and 
12th,  with  its  two  towers  and  well-known  chimes 
and  famous  bronze  font  of  12th-century  work. 
In  addition  there  were  the  domed  church  of  St. 
Andrew,  used  as  the  Exchange,  and  the  baroque 
fountains  in  the  Place  du  Marche.  Thios,  as 
a  subject  for  German  bombardment,  it  may  be 
seen  that  Liege  had  many  attractions,  even  if 
it  did  not  come  up  to  the  standard  of  Louvain 
or  Reims. 


Such,  then,  was  the  ancient  town  which  lay 
sleeping  peacefully  amid  its  ring  of  watchdog 
forts  that  nestled  so  comfortably  between  the 
wooded  uplands  on  the  night  of  August  3, 
1914. 

The  stirring  events  of  the  following  day, 
culminating  in  the  tragedy  of  Vise,  have  already 
been  narrated,  showing  that  varied  fortunes  had 
so  far  attended  Germany's  first  steps  in  the  war. 
The  successful  seizure  of  Luxemburg  and  the 
quiet  crossing  of  the  Belgian  frontier,  with  the 
occupation  of  Limburg,  had  promised  well  for 
her.  At  the  moment,  indeed,  it  looked  as  if  the 
Kaiser's  plans  for  an  invasion  of  France  would  be 
smoothly  carried  out  and  his  Majesty  would  be 
able  to  count  Belgium  among  the  dutiful  children 
of  his  Empire.  Perhaps  he  even  found  some 
hope  in  the  fact  that  the  Queen  of  the  Belgians 
was  a  German  Princess,  born  at  Possenhofen, 
and  before  her  marriage  known  as  the  Duchess 
Elisabeth  of  Bavaria.  But  Germany  who 
treated  the  claims  of  national  honour  so  lightly 
herself  had  yet  to  learn  that  others  placed  them 
above  ties  of  family  and  even  above  considera- 
tions of  self-interest ! 

Instead  of  an  obedient  vassal  the  Kaiser 
found  in  Belgium  a  most  resolute  antagonist ; 
and,  when  the  storm  broke.  General  von  Em- 
mich's  three  Army  Corps,  travelling  lightly- 
equipped  for  speed,  discovered  that  it  was  not  so 
much  an  attack  upon  France  through  Belgium 
as  a  serious  invasion  of  Belgium  itself  which  lay 
before  them,  while  the  taking  of  even  the  little 
town  of  Vise  had  caused  so  much  bloodshed  and 
provoked  such  bitter  enmity  as  augured  ill  for 
future  progress. 

The  bombardment  of  Liege  commenced  in  the 
early  morning — a  dull  and  hot  morning — of 
Augvist  5,  the  advance  of  the  artillery  having 
been  covered — as  is  always  the  case  in  a  German 
movement — ^by  masses  of  cavalry,  and  it  was 
continued  without  cessation  until  the  8th. 
The  Germans  attacked  along  a  very  wide  front, 
stretching  north  to  the  smoking  ruins  of  Vise 
close  to  the  Dutch  frontier,  and  on  the  south 
a  considerable  distance  below  Liege ;  but  the 
artillery  employed  was  not  heavy  enough. 
The  big  siege  gvins  had  not  arrived  and  the  forts 
had  the  best  of  the  preliminary  duel. 

Then  the  amazing  thing  happened.  It  was 
as  though  the  German  generals,  knowing  nothing 
of  war,  had  just  read  in  some  book  how  Napoleon 
won  victories  by  the  sudden,  unexpected  u.se 
of  solid  masses  of  men  and  had  said  to  them- 
selves, "  Good  !  No  one  will  expect  the  sudden 
application  of  masses  of  men  in  a  case  like  this  : 
so  we  will  apply  them."  The  result  almost 
moved  even  the  busy  Belgians  in  the  trencheg 


THE .  TIMES   HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


223 


^^^m^-i':^^£mmimsm 

l^^^^^^^^^^^K 

^^H 

-IT-  ,y-^^^|||^ 

>^^^^^^^IK^ 

'*>               m 

7 

THE  QUEEN  OF  THE  BELGIANS. 


224: 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


WHERE  THE  GERMANS  ARE  SAID  TO  HAVE  FIRST  CROSSED  THE  MEUSE. 


to  pity.  "  It  was  death  in  haystacks,"  said  one 
of  them  afterwards,  trying  to  describe  the  effect 
of  the  combined  field-gun,  machine-gun,  and 
rifle  fire  upon  the  masses  of  men.  Another 
eye-witness  stated  that  the  average  height  of 
the  ridges  of  German  dead  was  1 J  yards.  Many 
corpses  are  required  to  reach  that  level.  It  was 
the  visible  result  of  a  form  of  military  enter- 
prise which  a  civihan  who  had  dined  too  well 
might   conceive. 

As  the  day  wore  on  the  battle  became  more 
fierce,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  successive 
waves  of  Germans  jammed  each  other  on,  until 
before  one  of  the  forts  a  great  host  of  men 
succeeded  in  gaining  a  footing  on  the  near  slopes, 
where  the  great  guns  could  not  be  depressed  to 
reach  them.  For  a  brief  space  they  seemed  to 
think  that  they  were  on  the  threshold  of  victory 
and  rushed  forward,  only  to  discover — what, 
surely,  their  officers  shovild  have  known  all 
along — that  the  machine  guns  were  waiting 
for  them.  Further  back  their  conu-ades  had 
been  killed  :   here  they  were  massacred. 

In  contrast  with  this  useless  waste  of  German 
life,  the  Belgian  troops  in  the  trenches  appear 
to  have  been  kept  admirably  in  hand.  Some  of 
the  subsiding  ripples  of  the  tide  of  German 
assatilt  were  only  definitely  suppressed  by  rifle 
fire  at  50  yards ;  and  often  the  ideal  distance  for 
a  bayonet  charge,  when  you  can  see  the  whites 
of  your  enemies'  eyes,  seemed  almost  reached. 
Now  and  £igain  it  actually  was  reached ;    and 


then  the  staggering  German  ranks  appeared  to 
have  no  stomach  for  cold  steel.  Many  turned 
and  ran  ;  many  held  up  their  hands  and  svu*- 
rendered  ;  the  rest  were  killed. 

It  was  rather  surprising  that  men  who  had 
gone  through  so  much  should  have  been  cowed 
at  the  last  by  the  bayonet.  Considered  in  cold 
blood,  as  a  feat  performed  by  intelligent  men, 
it  should  seem  a  much  more  terrible  test  of 
courage  to  march,  as  on  parade,  in  solid  ranks 
into  the  hell  of  an  entrenched  enemy's  com- 
bined and  concentrated  fire  of  big  guns, 
machine  guns,  and  rifles  than  to  meet  a  bayonet 
charge  in  which  such  solidity  as  the  ranks 
retained  would  have  been  all  on  the  side  of  the 
Germans.  Yet  it  was  not  only  at  Liege,  but 
also  on  many  fields  of  subsequent  battle,  that 
the  Belgian  and  allied  troops  discovered  to 
their  surprig3  and  almost  to  their  disappoint- 
ment that  the  German  infantry  would  not 
wait  for  the  application  of  steel.  Scores  of 
instances  could  be  quoted  in  which  British 
soldiers,  after  expressing  their  personal  contempt 
for  the  German  rifie-fire — "  they  can't  shoot 
for  nuts  "  was  a  favourite  comment — still  ex- 
pressed their  great  admire, ti  >n  for  the  way  in 
which  those  ranks  of  men  came  stumbling  over 
the  corpses  of  their  slaughtered  comrades  to  be 
slaughtered  in  their  turn.  And  then  always 
came  the  final  criticism — "  but  they  won't  wait 
for  the  bayonet."  This  seeming  anomaly  is  ex- 
plained by  one  word  used  above,  in  considering 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


225 


whether  the  courageous  advance  of  the 
German  soldiers  to  almost  certain  death  was 
*'  a  feat  performed  by  intelligent  men."  That 
is  just  what  it  was  not.  The  German  system 
of  discipline  took  a  human  being  and  converted 
him,  in  spite  of  whatever  individual  intelligence 
he  might  possess,  into  a  military  machine 
which  could  exhibit  no  individual  intelligence 
whatever.  The  British  system,  and  the  French 
and  Belgian  also,  set  a  higher  value  upon  the 
men,  seeking  to  convert  each  human  being  in 
the  ranks  into  an  intelligent  fighting  man.  The 
result  was  that  in  action  theAlHed  troops  did 
not  perfunctorily  loose  off  their  cartridges  at 
the  landscape  in  general.  Each  man  of  them 
tried  to  kill  as  many  Germans  as  he  could. 
Hence  the  tremendous  difference  in  the  effective- 
ness of  the  rifle  fire  on  the  two  sides  ;  and,  of 
course,  when  it  came  to  bayonet  work  the 
difference  was  more  marked  still.  Behind  each 
Belgian,  French,  or  British  bayonet  was  a 
trained  man  intelligently  determined  to  do  as 
much  damage  with  it  to  the  enemy  as  he  could. 
Behind  the  rows  of  German  bayonets  were 
almost  rnechanical  combatants,  whose  discipline 
and  courage  had  already  been  strained  to  the 
breaking  point  by  the  fearful  ordeal  through 
which  they  had  been  marched.  Of  course, 
hey  did   not  want  to  wait  for  the  cold  steel. 


Yet  it  is  not  to  be  denied — as  indeed  the 
Belgians  admitted  without  reservation — that 
up  to  this  point  the  unfortunate  German 
soldiers  showed  most  stoical  courage.  The 
blame  for  the  disaster  rested  with  their  com- 
mander. It  was  as  though  he  had  heard 
that  you  cannot  make  an  omelette  without 
breaking  eggs,  and  so  flung  a  whole  basketful 
of  eggs  upon  the  floor  to  show  himself  a  cook  ! 

Contrast  this  with  the  wiser  and,  as  it  proved, 
much  more  rapid  method  adopted  against  the 
equally  strong  fortress  of  Namur  later  on. 
Then  the  first  news  which  we  i  eceived  came,  at 
the  end  of  a  long  telegram  describing  the  con- 
tinued advance  of  the  German  Army  towards 
Paris,  in  the  following  words  : — "  They  (the 
Germans)  have,  too,  partially  invested  Namur 
and  opened  upon  its  forts  with  heavy  artillery." 
This  was,  of  covirse,  the  right  course  to  adopt  in 
attacking  a  ring  fortress.  Such  a  fortress  is 
comparable  to  an  encircling  wall,  and  the  first 
thing  to  do  is  to  invest  it  and  make  a  breach  in 
it.  Then  and  not  till  then  is  the  time  to  send 
ma  ses  of  infantry  forward — through  the  breach. 
At  Liege  the  masses  of  infantry  were  sent  against 
the  unbroken  wall.  At  Namur  the  fire  of 
the  heavy  gims  was  so  overwhelming  that  the 
ring  was  broken  in  several  places  almost 
simultaneously.     No  wonder  that  at  Liege  the 


THE  CHURCH  AT  VISE. 
Probably  the  First  Church  Destroyed  by  the  Germans. 


(Newspaper  Illusiratums 


226 


TEE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Germans  were  sent  staggering  back  or  that  at 
Namxir  they  quickly  advanced  to  victory. 

To  understand  why  Lie  e  could  not  be  taken 
by  assault,  in  spite  of  the  great  force  which  was 
hurled  upon  it  ;    why,  up  to  a  certain  point, 
it  was  able  to  resist  the  determined  and  con- 
tinuous attack  subs  quently  made  upon  it  by 
superior  force  ;    and  also  why  it  inevitably  fell, 
we  must  have  a  clear  picture  of  the  defences  in 
our  minds.      The  diagram  maps  published   on 
pages  340  and  341  illustrate  the  main  facts  of  ihe 
position,  and  we  must  remember  that  the  ring 
of  twelve  forts  was  33  miles  in  circumference, 
and  that  they  were  situated  each  about  four 
miles  from  the  town  and  on  the  average  about 
two  to  three  miles  from  one  another.     Thus 
the  interval  between  fort  and  fort  was  too  large 
t3  be  held  by  a  garrison  which  was  numerically 
£0  weak  as  was  the  force  under  General  Leman's 
command.     It  is  true  that  during  the  earlier 
stages  of  the  fighting,  when  the  German  attack 
developed  only  on  a  narrow  front,  the  superior 
mobility  of  the  Belgian  forces,  moving  higher 
and  thither  on  short  interior  lines  of  commimica- 
tion,  enabled  them  on  each  occasion  to  oppose 
a  withering  machine-gun  and  rifle  fire  to  the 
German  advance  and  even  to  fling  back  the 
shattered  ranks  of  the  assailants  finally  with 
resolute  bayonet  charges ;    but  this  advantage 
was  lost  so  soon  as  the  widening  area  of  the 
German  attack  involved  so  many  of  the  forts 
that  no  man  could  be  spared  from  the  defender's 
trenches  between  any  two  of  them  to  strengthen 
the  defence  elsewhere.     It  was  then  that  the 
necessity  of  withdrawing  the  field  forces  became 
apparent   to   General   Leman,   who   elected   to 
hold  out  with  the  forts  alone.     By  this  time, 
however,  the  400  guns,  which  represented  the 
total  armament  of  the  forts,  were  both  out- 
numbered and  outclassed  by  the  heavy  artillery 
which  the  Germans  had   brought  into  position, 
andttie  last  stand  of  Liege  was  qmte  hopeless. 
All  that  General  Leman  could  hope  to  do — and 
grandly  succeeded  in  doing — was  to    delay  the 
German  advance  a  little  longer  and  to  make 
sure  that  the  forts  on  falling  into  the  hands  of 
the  enemy  should  be  only  masses  of  ruins. 

The  conflicting  nature  of  the  accounts  which 
were  published  at  the  time  concerning  the 
resistance  offered  by  the  forts  .was  largely 
due  to  confusion  between  the  large  and  the  smaU 
forts.  Of  the  ring  of  12,  three  on  the  north 
and  east,  namely  Pontisse,  Barchon,  •  and 
Fleron,  and  three  on  the  west  and  south, 
namely,  Loncin,  F16malle,  and  Boncelles,  were 
large  and  strong.  The  other  six  were  com- 
paratively small  and  unimportant  as  strong - 
JiQlds,  although  if  the  whole  ring  had  been  held 


by  an  adequate  force  they  would  have  con- 
tinued to  be,  as  they  were  at  first,  invaluable 
as  buttresses  to  the  fighting  line  and  connecting 
links  between  the  large  forts. 

They    were    not,    however,    strong    enough, 
when  isolated,  to  withstand  a  siege  with  modern 
artillery  ;     and  in  regarding  Liege  as  a  ring 
fortress    for    this    purpose    only   the   six   forts 
named  above  should    be  taken  into  considera- 
tion ;    and  when  the  Germans  claimed  to  have 
demolished  three    of    the    south-eastern  forts, 
namely,  Embourg,  Chaudf ontaine,  and  Evegnee, 
this  did  not  really  affect  the  claim  of  the  Belgians 
that   "  the  forts    on    the     east     and    south," 
namely,  Barchon,  Fleron,  and  Boncelles,  were 
"  still   holding   out."     All  of   the  larger  forts 
were  constructed  upon  the  same  plan,  being 
triangular  in  shape,  with  a  moat  on  each  side 
and  gvms  at  each  corner.     In  the  centre  of  the 
interior  space  was  a  steel  turret  with  two  6in. 
howitzers,   and   in   a   square  roim.d  this  four 
other  steel  tvirrets,  all  armed  with  5in.  qmck- 
firing  guns.     All  these  turrets  were  embedded 
in  one  solid  concrete  block  ;    and  in  addition, 
besides  searchlights   and  many  machine  guns, 
the  corners   of   the   triangle   held   quick-firing 
guns    in   disappearing   turrets.       Against   any 
known  artillery  at  the  time  of  their  construction 
these  forts  were  probably  impregnable  ;  and 
even  at  the  time  of  the  war  they  were  doubtless 
capable  of  holding  out  for  months  against  any 
ordinary  field  force.     But  the  big  siege  guns 
which  the  Germans  brought  against  them  were 
another  matter  ;    and  the  daily  legend,  "  Liege 
forts  still  holding  out,"  only  continued    to  be 
true  until  they  had  been  bombarded. 

In  order  to  imderstand  some  of  the  curious 
incidents  in  the  first  stages  of  the  attack  upon 
Liege  we  mixst  remember  that  the  same  secret 
preparations  which  succeeded  so  well  in  Luxem- 
burg had  been  made  in  Liege  also.  In  many 
of  the  houses,  occupied  by  vmsuspected  citizens 
who  were  really  secret  German  agents,  were 
found  thousands  of  rifles,  quickfiring  guns, 
and  sets  of  harness,  intended  for  the  armament 
of  the  Germans  who  had  entered  the  city  in 
mufti  and  vmarmed.  It  was  this  arrangement, 
only  very  partially  successful,  which  nearly 
cost  the  life  of  General  Leman  on  the  occasion 
when  Colonel  Marchand  was  killed,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  siege,  because  it  enabled  a 
party  of  armed  Germans  surreptitiously  to 
surround  the  house  where  the  Commandant 
was  conferring  with  the  General  Staff.  Various 
accounts  are  given  of  the  melee  which  followed, 
but  all  agree  as  to  the  circumstance  of  Colonel 
Marchand' s  death  and  the  saving  of  General 
T^eman  by  an  officer  of  Herciilean  build  who 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


227 


^^^^^n:rS5t.=^€:- 


BRAVO,    BELGIUM! 

This  cartoon,  reproduced  by  special  permission  of  the  proprietors  of  "  Punch,"  admirably  expresses 
the  true  spirit  of  the  Belgians'  resistance  to  German  aggression. 


forced    him    over    the    wall    of    an    adjoining 
foundry. 

It  was,  no  doubt,  this  startling  discovery  of 
the  presence  of  concealed  enemies  in  Liege 
which  led  General  Leman — ^who  in  many  of 
his  methods  and  the  personal  enthusiasm  which 
he  evoked  reminds  the  British  reader  of  Baden- 
Powoll  in  Mafeking — to  lay  the  trap  which  led 


to  the  annihilation  of  one  German  band  and 
the  capture   of  another. 

From  the  welter  of  confused  accounts  of  the 
bloody  happenings  on  the  night  of  August  7 
one  fact  seems  to  stand  out  boldly,  that,  while 
the  German  demand  for  an  armistice  for  the 
alleged  purpose  of  biu-ying  their  dead  wa? 
supposed     to     be     still     under     consideration. 


228 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


PLAGE  ST.  LAMBERT  AND  PALACE  OF  JUSTICE,  LI^GE. 


German  troops  succeeded  in  entering  the  town 
of  Liege  and  fierce  street  fighting  ensued,  as 
a  result  of  which  the  greater  part  of  the  Belgian 
garrison  retreated  in  good  order  from  the 
town.  Unfortunately,  as  at  Vis6,  some  of  the 
inhabitants  had  taken  a  prominent  part  in 
the  fighting,  and  in  retaliation  the  Germans 
shot  every  one,  man,  woman,  or  child,  who  fell 
into  their  hands.  There  appears  to  be  no  doubt 
that  this  was  done,  or  that  it  was  done  by  order. 

A  semi-oflficial  statement,  issued  in  Berlin 
on  August  9,  ran  : — "  According  to  news  re- 
ceived here  about  the  operations  around  Liege 
the  civilian  population  took  part  in  the  struggle, 
and  German  troops  and  doctors  were  fired  upon 
from  ambush.  .  .  .  It  is  possible  that  these 
facts  were  due  to  the  mixed  population  in 
industrial  centres,  but  it  is  also  possible  that 
France  and  Belgium  are  preparing  a  franc- 
tireur  war  against  our  troops.  If  this  is  proved 
by  further  facts  our  adversaries  are  themselves 
responsible  if  the  war  is  extended  with  inexor- 
able strength  to  the  guilty  population.  The 
German  troops  are  only  accustomed  to  fight 
against  the  armed  power  of  a  hostile  State,  and 
cannot  be  blamed  if  in  self-defence  they  do  not 
give    quarter." 

If  the  severely  judicial  note  of  the  first  part 
of  this  proclamation  had  been  maintained  in 
the  conduct  of  the  troops  in  the  field  the 
world  might  have  had  little  reason  to  com- 
plain of  Teuton  brutality.  Non-com- 
batant Belgians  vmdoubtedly  took  part 
in  the  defence  of  Liege  as  well  as  of  Vis6. 


But  everything  had  happened  so  suddenly 
through  the  treacherous  completeness  of  Ger- 
many's plans  for  the  invasion  of  Belgium 
without  warning  that  there  had  been  little  time 
for  the  Belgian  authorities  to  issue  any  effective 
advice  to  the  Belgian  population  as  to  the 
rules  of  war  regarding  non-combatants.  Every 
effort  was  made  indeed  to  placard  the  villages 
with  warning  notices  ;  but  there  is  no  evidence 
that  such  notices  were  or  could  have  been 
placarded  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Liege  in 
time  to  anticipate  the  events  of  August  5- 

If ,  moreover,  there  could  be  any  circimastances 
in  which  the  plain  duty  of  an  invader  was  to 
waive  the  strictness  of  the  rules  of  war  and  to 
strain  his  spirit  of  mercy  and  forbearance  to 
the  utmost  those  circumstances  were  present 
here  :  because  the  German  Government  openly 
admitted  before  the  world  that  it  was  doing 
a  "  wrong  "  to  Belgium  by  breaking  down  her 
sanctioned  neutrality.  Indeed,  u  less  inter- 
national law  is  based  upon  s  me  lower  ideal 
of  justice  than  that  which  inspires  all  civilized 
law  as  between  man  and  man,  the  Germans  could 
not  lawfully  appeal  to  the  rules  of  war  at  all. 
The  armed  burglar  cannot  take  legal  proceedings 
for  assault  against  a  householder  who  arrests 
him.  It  is  true  that  according  to  law  the  right 
to  arrest  belongs  to  the  police,  and  that  one 
ordinary  civilian  who  violently  seizes  another 
commits  an  assault ;  but  the  armed  biu-glar, 
by  doing  wrong  himself  in  the  first  instance  and 
thus  provoking  the  plucky  householder  to  seize 
him,  has  deliberately  discarded  that  statu*  of 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


229 


ordinary  citizenship  which  would  have  entitled 
him  to  protection  by  the  law. 

If,  then,  there  had  been  an  adequate  force 
behind  international  law,  as  there  is  behind  the 
ordinary  law  of  all  civilized  countries,  the 
Belgian  civilian  who  resisted  the  German  in- 
vader should  have  been  able  to  say  to  his  oppo- 
nent, as  the  householder  can  say  to  the  armed 
burglar  :  "  If  I  kill  you,  it  is  only  justifiable 
homicide,  but  if  you  kill  me,  it  is  murder." 
This  difference  in  their  positions  before  the  law 
would  directly  follow  from  the  fact  that  the 
burglar  had  caused  the  whole  trouble  hy  doing 
wrong.  Yet  we  have  the  spectacle  of  the  Ger- 
man Government  admittedly  doing  wrong  and 
at  the  same  time  claiming  the  right  to  take 
extreme  advantage   of  international  law  ! 

Moreover,  even  if  the  German  Government 
had  not  deliberately  placed  itself  outside  the 
pale  of  international  law  by  committing  the 
"  wrong  "  to  which  it  brazenly  pleaded  guilty, 
any  claim  which  it  might  have  to  execute  inter- 
national law  woxild  only  hold  against  those  who 
had  committed  breaches  of  that  law.  Great 
latitude  is  necessarily  given  to  civUized  com- 
manders in  the  field  in  interpreting  the  law  of 
war  and  in  carrying  out  their  judgments.  A 
civUian  strongly  and  reasonably  suspected  of 
having  fired  upon  the  enemy's  troops,  who  has 
fallen  into  that  enemy's  hands,   cannot  claim 


to  be  defended  by  coimsel ;  nor  is  he  often  able 
to  call  witnesses  in  his  behalf.  His  trial  is 
brief,  often  with — it  is  to  be  feared — a  strong 
bias  against  him  in  the  mind  of  his  judge. 
The  fact  that  in  war  time  many  an  innocent 
citizen  thus  gets  shot  by  the  enemy  as  a  spy 
is  one  which  international  law  is  forced  to  over- 
look as  one  of  the  incidental  evils  of  war,  which 
can  be  neither  prevented  nor  remedied.  But 
this  shooting  of  an  innocent  citizen  on  sus- 
picion only,  after  a  mockery  of  a  "  trial,"  is  the 
utmost  limit  to  which  the  inflamed  passions  of 
civilized  men  can  claim  the  sanction  of  inter- 
national law  in  shedding  innocent  blood.  Therel  s 
no  "  law,"  human  or  divine — or  one  might  even 
say  devilish — which  could  sanction  the  hideous 
and  wholesale  atrocities  committed  in  Liege  by 
these  sanctimonious  apostles  of  German  culture. 
Still  further — in  order  to  leave  no  loophole 
for  casuistry  to  wriggle  out  of  the  frightful 
charge  recorded  against  Germany  in  this  war — 
even  if  the  German  Government  had  not,  on 
its  own  admission,  placed  itself  outside  the  pale 
of  international  law,  and  even  if  the  outrages 
committed  by  its  agents  had  not  gone  far 
beyond  the  worst  form  of  reprisal  which  that 
law  could  sanction,  this  mock-serious  "  warn- 
ing "  of  reprisal  was  deliberately  issued  by  the 
German  Government  after  it  knew  that  the 
bloody  deeds  had  already  been  done. 


SQUARE  OF  THE  VIRGIN,  LIEGE,  BEFORE  BOMBARDMENT. 


•> 


230 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


CHURCH  OF  ST.  JACQUES,  LIEGE. 


It  was  on  August  9  that  in  Berlin  the  Kaiser's 
Government  proclaimed  :  "  IJ  this  (that  France 
and  Belgium  were  preparing  an  illegitimate 
form  of  war  against  the  German  Army)  is 
proved  by  further  facts  our  adversaries  are  them- 
selves responsible  if  the  war  is  extended  with 
inexorable  strength  to  the  guilty  population^ 
And  it  was  on  August  7,  two  days  earlier,  that 
the  German  Government  had  full  information 
of  the  atrocities  committed  by  its  troops  upon 
unarmed  Belgians  in  Liege^  where  there  was 
general  massacre  of  "  tous  ceux  qui  leur  sont 
tornbes  sous  la  main,  hommes,  femmes  et 
enfants." 

Think  of  the  hideous  irony  of  it  all !  Here 
was  the  armed  burglar  who  had,  by  his  own 
confessed  crime,  put  himself  outside  the  pale 
of  the  law,  not  only  claiming  a  legal  right 
to  execute  the  householder  who  resisted 
him,  but  also  self-righteously  threatening  to 
apply  "  inexorable  strength  "  to  the  rest  of  the 
household  two  days  after  he  had  murdered 
them  all  and  burned  down  the  house. 

It  has  been  necesseiry  thus  to  deal  somewhat 
fully  with  the  terrible  charges  which  lie  at  the 
door  of  the  German  Government-  at  this  point 
of  our  narrative,  becaiise  it  was  here,  in  and  near 
Liege,  at  the  very  outset  of  the  campaign  in 
Belgium,  that  the  German  commanders  had  a 
golden  opportimity  to  strike  a  high  and  noble 
keynote  of  the  war.  Since  their  Government 
hsA  admitted  doing  a  wrong  to  Belgium  and 
had  promised  reparation  later,  they  shovild 
have  reaUzed  that  they  lay  vinder  a  moral 
disadvantage  and  should  have  done  everything 


in  their  power  to  put  themselves  right  with  the 
Belgian  people.  Instead  of  insisting  upon 
their  "  right "  to  enforce,  and  even  to  exceed, 
the  rules  of  war  in  dealing  with  civilian  belliger- 
ents— like  a  burglar  demanding  the  observance 
of  Queensberry  nales,  with  additions  of  his  own, 
in  a  fight  with  an  aggrieved  householder — they 
should  have  been  watchfiil  for  opportunity 
to  exhibit  forbearance  and  clemency  to 
civilians  taken  in  arms,  thus  Ulustrating  their 
Government's  professed  desire  to  make  repara- 
tion for  its  wrongdoing. 

But  this  did  not  satisfy  the  Germans.  They 
were  in  a  hurry  to  begin  with.  Like  a  man 
who  has  wagered  to  go  round  the  world  in  a 
certain  time  and  has  missed  his  train  at  the 
start,  they  were  already  infuriated  by  their 
own  failure  to  bring  up  their  heavy  artillery 
and  ammunition  in  time  to  make  short  work 
of  the  Liege  forts.  They  were  further  enraged 
by  the  vigorous  resistance  of  Belgian  troops, 
which  they  did  not  expect  to  find  in  their  way 
so  much ;  and  the  fact  that  patriotic  Belgian 
civilians  took  part  in  the  fighting  caused 
their  fury  to  boil  over.  So  they  sought  to 
terrify  the  Belgian  nation  by  massacre ;  and 
Liege's  blood-drenched  ashes  bore  the  first 
signature  of  the  new  German  war-spirit  on 
Belgian  soil — an  evil  spirit  for  which,  as  the 
evidence  shows,  not  merely  the  German  soldiery 
were  to  blame,  nor  even  merely  their  com- 
manders in  the  field,  but  also  the  coldly  biutal 
centre  of  military  power  in  Berlin. 

Among  other  specific  charges,  supported  by 
evidence,  which  were  issued  on  August  25  by 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


231 


tlie  British  Press  Bureau  on  the  autliority  of  the 
Belgian  Minister,  it  was  stated  that  on  August 
6,  before  one  of  the  forts  of  Liege,  the  Germans 
surprised  a  party  of  Belgian  soldiers  engaged 
in  digging  entrenchments.  The  latter,  being 
-unarmed,  hoisted  a  whit<^  flag  ;  but  the  Germans 
ignored  this  and  continued  to  fire  upon  the 
helpless  party.  On  the  same  day,  before 
Fort  Loncin,  a  case  of  treacherous  abuse  of 
the  white  flag  occurred  in  the  case  of  a  body 
of  German  troops  who  hoisted  the  signal  of 
siurender  and  then  opened  fire  at  close  range 
upon  the  party  of  Belgians  sent  to  take  charge 
of   them. 

Contrast  such  conduct  as  this  with  the 
war -spirit  of  Belgium.  The  victim  of  an  un- 
provoked attack  and  almost  unprepared  for 
the  storm  that  had  burst  upon  her,  she  gave 
to  the  world  an  example  of  public  spirit  which 
electrified  Europe.  That  in  the  excitement  of 
the  moment  she  struck  with  both  hands  at 
the  invader,  obviously  unaware  that  the 
laws  of  war  permit  the  use  of  the  swordhand 
only — for  the  Belgian  Government  had  not 
had  time  then  to  post  up  in  the  villages  the 
official  warning  to  civilians  not  to  take  part 
in  the  conflict — was  a  venial  offence,  which 
a  generous  enemy  would  have  met  by  a  serious 
warning  of  the  consequences  which  would 
follow  its  repetition  ;  and  for  a  generous  enemy 
Belgium  and  her  alUes  would  have  felt  at  least 
respect.     But  that  was  not  the  German  way  ; 


and  for  the  evil  consequences  which  fol- 
lowed  the  brutalization  of  war  in  Europe 
the  Kaiser's  Government  is  directly  re- 
sponsible. 

General  von  Emmich  was  at  this  period  the 
Conunander -in -Chief  of  the  German  Army  of 
the  Meuse.  He  had  been  previously  in  command 
of  the  10th  Army  Corps  at  Hanover,  and  this, 
with  the  7th  Corps,  was  the  part  of  his  force 
which  he  employed  to  carry  out  the  orders 
that  had  evidently  been  given  to  him  to  cap- 
ture Liege  quickly  at  all  costs.  He  used 
88,000  men  on  the  first  day,  increased  to 
120,000  on  the  second,  against  the  Belgian 
22,500,  which  the  Germans  knew  to  be  in- 
adequate for  the  complete  defence  of  the 
fortress ;  and  what  was  more  natiu-al  than 
that  he  should  have  determined,  even  without 
the  explicit  orders  from  Berlin,  to  sweep  them 
out  of  his  path  as  a  preliminary  to  swift  advance 
through  Belgium  towards  the  French  frontier  ? 
His  officers  certainly  believed  that  they  had 
an  easy  job  before  them — a  task  pour  riref 
as  one  of  them,  a  prisoner,  explained  afterwards 
— and  entered  into  action  in  the  gayest  spirits. 
Bitter  must  have  been  their  disappointment 
when  the  great  7th  Army  Corps,  after  concen- 
trating its  attack  upon  the  three  eastern  forts 
— namely,  Barchon,  Evegnee,  and  Fleron — 
was  met  with  such  devastating  artillery  fire 
from  the  forts  and  such  well-directed  machine- 
gun   and  infantry  fire  from  the  trenches  and 


THE  CLOISTERS,  PALACE  OF  JUSTICE. 


232 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


A  RUINED  STREET  IN  LIEGE. 


[Newspaper  Illustrations. 


barricades  which  had  been  thrown  up  between 
thero  that  only  a  remnant  came  reeling  back. 

The  value  of  the  success  gained  by  the  Belgians 
in  withstanding  the  first  Gremian  onset  was 
incalculable.  Not  only  did  it  destroy  one 
large  factor  in  the  Kaiser's  scheme  for  the  con- 
quest of  France,  i.e.,  the  belief  that,  as  he  him- 
self had  said,  he  could  sweep  through  Belgium 
as  easily  as  he  could  wave  his  hand  ;  not  only 
did  it  disarrange  the  time-table  by  which  the 
conquest  of  France  was  to  be  completed  before 
Russia  could  come  to  her  assistance  ;  it  also 
shattered  the  European  reputation  of  the 
Kaiser's  Army  for  invincibility  ;  it  had  been 
supposed  that  German  officers  necessarily  were 
prodigies  of  miUtary  efficiency  and  that  the 
troops  which  they  commanded  were  the  most 
perfect  man -slaying  machine  which  human 
genius  and  Grerman  "  thoroughness "  could 
create.  But  at  Liege  the  Grerman  commanders 
showed  themselves  to  be  grievous  bunglers  in 
setting  their  men  tasks  which  mere  flesh  and 
blood  could  not  perform,  while  the  men  also 
showed  themselves  to  be  inept  with  the  rifle 
and  to  have  a  wholesome  dislike  for  the  bayonet. 
British  troops  made  these  discoveries  on  their 
own  account  later  ;  but  in  the  initial  stages  of 
the  campaign  in  Belgium  it  was  worth  another 
100,000  men  to  General  Lemanthat  his  soldiers 
should  know  that  they  had  only  to  use  their 
rifles  and  bayonets  with  intelligence  and 
courage  to  beat  the  Germans  every  time  if  they 
met  on  anything  like  equal  terms. 


At  the  outset,  therefore,  Greneral  vou 
Emmich's  effort  to  overrun  Liege — Uy  "  take 
it  in  his  stride,"  as  it  were,  on  his  march  to 
Paris — with  the  7th  Army  Corps  failed  utterly  ; 
and  when  the  7th  was  reinforced  by  the  10th 
and  9th  Corps,  and  six  of  the  forts  were  simul- 
taneously attacked,  no  better  results,  from  the 
German  point  of  view,  followed  the  assault  in 
force. 

That  the  Belgians  should  thus  have  held  up 
120,000  of  the  best  German  troops  for  two 
whole  days  of  fierce  fighting  was  a  splendid 
feat  of  arms  which  gladdened  the  hearts  of  the 
Allies  as  an  omen  of  ultimate  \-ictory. 

Some  notion  of  the  carnage  which  resulted 
from  the  German  method  of  attack  may  be 
gathered  from  the  following  description  given 
by  a  Belgian  officer  who  took  part  in  the  de- 
fence : — 

"  As  line  after  line  of  the  German  infantry 
advanced,  we  simply  mowed  them  down.  It 
was  terribly  easy,  monsieur,  and  I  turned  to 
a  brother  officer  of  mine  more  than  once  and 
said,  '  Voila  !  They  are  coming  on  again,  in  a 
dense,  close  formation  !  They  must  be  mad  ! ' 
They  made  no  attempt  at  deploying,  but  came 
on,  line  after  line,  almost  shoulder  to  shoulder, 
until,  as  we  shot  them  down,  the  fallen  were 
heaped  one  on  top  of  the  other,  in  an  awful 
barricade  of  dead  and  wounded  men  that 
threatened  tc  mask  our  guns  and  cause  us 
trouble.  I  thought  of  Napoleon's  saying — if  he 
said  it,  monsieur  ;  and  I  doubt  it,  for  he  had  no 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


233 


care  of  humarl  life  ! — *  Cast  magnifique,  mais 
ce  n'est  pas  la  guerre  ! '  No,  it  was  slaughter — 
just  slaughter  ! 

"  So  high  became  the  barricade  of  the  dead 
and  wounded  that  we  did  not  know  whether 
to  fire  through  it  or  to  go  out  and  clear  openings 
with  our  hands.  We  would  have  liked  to 
extricate  some  of  the  wounded  from  the  dead, 
but  we  dared  not.  A  stiff  wind  carried  away 
the  smoke  of  the  guns  quickly,  and  we  could 
see  some  of  the  wounded  men  trying  to  release 
themselves  from  their  terrible  position.  I 
will  confess  I  crossed  myself,  and  could  have 
wished    that    the    smoke    had  remained  ! 

"  But,  would  you  believe  it,  this  veritable 
wall  of  dead  and  dying  actually  enabled  these 
wonderful  Germans  to  creep  closer,  and 
actually  charge  up  the  glacis  !  Of  course, 
they  got  no  further  than  half-way,  for  our 
maxims  and  rifles  swept  them  back.  Of  course, 
we  had  our  own  losses,  but  they  were  slight 
compared  with  the  carnage  inflicted  upon  our 
enemies." 


In  spite  of  these  terrible  experiences  CJeneral 
von  Emmich  appears  to  have  adhered  to  the 
old-fashioned  German  idea  that  a  fortress  like 
Liege  could  be  rushed  if  you  only  hurled  a 
sufficient  number  of  men  against  it.  But  the 
third  day  of  the  assault  added  nothing  to  the 
result  of  the  previous  two,  except  that  a  division 
of  German  cavalry  which  had  forded  the  Meuse 
was  surprised  and  cut  up  by  the  Belgian  Mixed 
Brigade ;  and  the  9th  German  Army  Corps 
had  been  brought  to  a  standstill  by  the  side  of 
the  7th  and  10th,  with  enormous  losses — 
although  these  do  not  appear  to  have  ap- 
proached the  niunber  of  25,000  given  in  con- 
temporary accounts,  which  was  more  than  the 
strength  of  the  entire  Belgian  garrison.  Yet 
how  severely  the  Germans'  advance  had  indeed 
been  checked  appeared  from  their  request  for 
an  armistice  of  24  hours  to  bury  the  dead  and 
collect  the  wounded  ;  and  it  was  not  inhumanity 
but  reasonable  distrust  of  German  honour 
which  prompted  the  Belgian  commander's 
refusal. 


EFFECT  OF  GERMAN  SHELL  FIRE. 


[Newspaper  lUustrations. 


234 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


? 


LEFT  SIDE  OF  THE  FAMOUS  BRIDGE  AT  LIEGE. 
Blown  up  by  Belgians  to  impede  the  German  Advance. 


Practically  the  sole  witnesses  of  this  terribly 
unequal  duel  between  the  advancing  German 
hosts  and  the  intrepid  defenders  of  Liege  were 
the  Dutch,  who  at  Maestricht,  just  within  the 
safe  frontier  of  Holland,  were  almost  within 
eyeshot  of  it  all.  Thus,  on  the  afternoon  of  the 
fateful  August  6  came  the  following  glimpse 
through  the  fog  of  war  which  had  settled 
aroimd  Liege  from  a  correspondent  at 
MaestrichL  : — 

"  I  could  clearly  see  from  the  hill  the  Germans 
in  little  boats  and  others  building  a  pontoon 
over  the  Meuse  south  of  Vise.  The  horses  were 
swum  across.  The  crossing  was  carried  out  in 
half  a  dozen  places  with  great  regularity.  The 
Germans  did  not  seem  much  concerned  at  the 
fire  of  the  *Belgian  forts.  The  Belgian  troops 
were  spread  out  over  the  rising  ground.  Fire 
from  a  German  mitrailleuse  kept  the  Belgians 
at  a  distance,  and  slowly  the  whole  hillside 
became  covered  with  German  soldiers,  who 
drove  the  Belgians  before  them. 

*'  By  5  o'clock  a  large  force  of  Germans  had 
crossed  the  Meuse  and  commenced  to  march 
south  on  Liege.  The  Belgians  tried  to  harass 
the  Germans  by  firing  into  the  progressing 
columns.     At    last    the    Belgians    cease  firing 


[Newspaper  lUusirations. 

and  retire.  *From  the  houses  along  the  road 
the  people  take  to  flight  in  despair. 

"  In  the  village  of  Eben  I  find  people  calm, 
looking  with  astonishment  at  the  tremendous 
body  of  troops  passing  along  the  route.  They 
were  not  molested  at  all  as  the  Germans  pro- 
gressed towards  Liege  along  both  banks  of  the 
Mexise. 

"  With  characteristic  optimism  Germans 
said,  *  In  two  days  we  will  have  Liege,  and 
within  a  week  we  will  be  before  Paris.'  " 

This  brief  telegram  gives  a  picturesque  but 
accvuate  stunmary  of  the  whole  tenor  of  the 
campaign  not  only  before  Liege  but  beyond 
Liege  and  Namur  and  Brussels  to  the  line  where 
they  first  encountered  the  shock  of  the  allied 
French  and  British  in  battle.  First,  we  see  the 
steady  inexorable  advance  of  the  German  hosts 
swarming  forward  like  ants— even  when,  as 
happened  later,  the  groimd  was  increasingly 
cumbered  with  their  own  dead.  We  see  the 
spirited  but  futile  counter-attacks  of  the 
niimerically  weak  Belgian  forces.  We  see  in 
every  direction  small  but  gallant  parties  of  the 
defenders  of  Belgium  swallowed  up  and  des- 
troyed by  the  advancing  grey-green  flood  of 
German  soldiery.     In  many  places  v7e  see  the 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


235 


RIGHT  SIDE  OF  BRIDGE  AT  LIEGE. 
Left  side  shown  on  opposite  page. 


{Newspaper  Illustrations, 


rural  population  fleeing  along  the  crowded 
roads  in  mad  panic  before  the  German  advance. 
In  others,  we  see  them  lining  the  streets  of  towns 
and  villages,  staring  in  stolid  despair  at  the 
seemingly  interminable  hosts  of  Germans 
marching  in  columns  to  the  west. 

That  is  the  whole  pictvire  of  the  war  aroxmd 
and  beyond  Liege ;  but  its  minor  episodes 
varied  dramatically  from  day  to  day. 

Thus,  on  the  eve  of  that  fateful  August  day 
when  Liege  town  surrendered  and  the  forts  of 
Barchon,  ifivegnee,  Fleron,  Chaudfontaine, 
Embourg,  and  Boncelles  were  all  subjected  to 
bombardment,  one  coiinter-attack  by  the 
Belgians  was  crowned  with  brilliant  success. 

This  was  delivered  from  the  heights  of 
Wandre,  a  position  to  the  west  of  Barchon, 
which  was  the  most  northerly  of  the  forts  then 
involved.  It  was  in  fact  an  assault  upon  the 
outposts  on  the  right  flank  of  the  Germans  ; 
and  the  Belgians  succeeded  in  slaughtering 
many  and  driving  the  rest  northwards,  away 
from  their  main  army,  to  Maestricht.  From 
here  they  were  said  to  have  been  sent  by  the 
Dutch  authorities  to  Aix-la-Chapelle,  an  instance 
of  misguided  assistance  to  belligerents  which 


might  have  raised  serious  international  ques- 
tions. The  Dutch,  however,  claimed  that  the 
only  persons  thus  befriended  were  German 
civilian  refugees  from  Belgium ;  and  the 
neutrality  of  the  Dutch  had  been  so  correctly 
maintained  in  other  respects  that  this  was 
probably  the  case,  although  of  covirse  great 
niimbers  of  the  German  refugees  were  spies 
and  military  agents. 

On  .the  same  day,  at  the  other  extremity  of 
the  semi-circular  line  of  battle,  on  the  outside 
left,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  German  advance, 
the  Garde  Civique  of  Liege  gained  a  brilliant 
httle  success  and  practically  destroyed  an 
attacking  force  near  the  fort  of  Boncelles.  Here, 
too,  international  questions  were  involved, 
because  the  Germans  insisted  upon  regarding 
the  Garde  Civique  as  non-combatants. 

Yet  another  trivial  Belgian  success  on  this 
day  stands  out  from  the  battle  smoke  envelop- 
ing two  sides  of  Liege  at  the  Chateau  de  Langres. 
Here  the  Belgians  made  a  show  of  resistance 
before  taking  to  flight ;  and  when  the  victorious 
Germans  crowded  into  the  stately  building, 
intent  on  loot,  a  terrific  explosion  for  a  moment 
drowned  even  the  deafening  noise  of  the  big 


MAP     OF    LIEGE     AND     THl 
Showing  the  roads,  railways,  rivers,  etc.,  and  indicating  thi . 


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238 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


ONE  OF  THE  FAMOUS  GERMAN  SIEGE  GUNS.        [Netcspaper  I tlustrations. 

This  photograph  shows  part  of  gun  mounted  on  a  special  trolley  to  facilitate  transport.     The  photograph  below 
illustrates  the  lower  mounting  of  the  gun,  with  recoil  cylinders.      The  gim  is  mounted  up  and  placed  on  a 

concrete  foundation  for   firing. 


guns    which    were    battering    the    forts.      The 
chateau  had  been  skilfully  mined. 

Thus  the  fortunes  of  the  day  seemed  to  vary 
so  much  in  detail  that  the  Belgians,  who  had 
taken  many  prisoners  and  seven  guns  and  had 


certainly  defeated  the  crack  corps  of  Branden- 
burg, were  elated  with  the  result. 

Already,  too,  the  gallant  defence  of  Liege 
had  won  for  the  city  the  highest  honour  which 
the  French  Government  novild  bestow.     Anti- 


MOUNTING  OF  THE  GUN  SHOWN  ABOVE.  \Newspaper  mustraium. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


239 


cipating  the  impulse  of  gratitude  and  admira- 
tion which  went  out  not  only  from  France  but 
from  the  entire  civUized  world  to  this  battered 
and  blood-stained  Walloon  town,  M.  Poincare, 
President  of  the  Republic,  sent  on  August  7  the 
following  message  to  the  King  of  the  Belgians  : — 
"  I  am  happy  to  annotmce  to  your  Majesty 
that  the  Government  of  the  Republic  has  just 
decorated  with  the  Legion  of  Honoiir  the  valiant 
town  of  Liege. 

"  It  wishes  thus  to  honour  the  courageous 
defenders  of  the  place  and  the  whole  Belgian 
Army,  with  which  since  this  morning  the  French 
Army  sheds  its  blood  on  the  battlefield. 

"  Raymoito  Poincahe." 
To  the  Belgian  nation  no  doubt  many  names, 
both  of  regiments  and  individuals,  have  been 
consecrated   by   the   martyrdom   of   Liege     as 
worthy  to  be  placed  with  that  of  General  Leman 
in  the  roll  of  undying  honour  ;   and  even  to  the 
necessarily  superficial  view  of  the  international 
historian  the  valour  of  the  13th  Mixed  Brigade 
in  meeting  the  brunt  of  the  German  assault 
stands  out    as    a   permanent   record    of  fame. 
The  successfxil  charge  of  a  single  squadron    of 
the    Belgian    lancers    upon    six    squadrons    of 
German  cavalry  was  another  brilliant  episode 
of  arms  which  Belgians  will  never  forget  when 
the  Great  War  is  discussed  ;  while  of  individual 
heroes — from  Colonel  Marchand,  who  gave  his 
life  for  his  chief,  to  Private  Domolin,  who  carried 
out  a  bayonet  charge  on  his  own  account  against 
the   advancing   Germans   and   returned   safely 
after  killing  four — these  were  enough  at  Liege 
alone   to   satisfy   any  nation's  pride.     Of   the 
Belgian  heroes   of   Liege,   Europe  will  always 
cherish  a  grateful  memory. 

But  the  high  hopes  awakened  by  these 
Belgian  successes,  which  had  so  deservedly 
e£kmed  this  tribute  from  the  French  Republic, 
were  entirely  fallacious  in  so  far  as  they  en- 
couraged the  belief  that  the  Germans  had  been 
worsted  in  a  trial  of  strength.  This  was  not  so. 
Nothing  which  the  Belgians  could  have  hoped 
to  do  could  have  been  of  any  avail  against  the 
overwhelming  German  numbers  and  the  great 
guns  which  slowly  lumbered  up  into  position  and 
to  which  the  Belgians  had  no  artUlery  that  could 
hope  to  reply  effectively,  nor  any  fortifications 
that  could  offer  resistance.  According  to  eye- 
witnesses, nothing  so  terrible  had  ever  been 
seen  in  war  as  the  effect  of  the  great  shells  fired 
into  the  Liege  forts.  Men  were  not  simply 
killed  or  wounded ;  they  were  blackened, 
burnt,  and  smashed.  No  wonder  that  three  of 
the  forts,  although  they  had  been  expected  to 
hold  out  for  at  least  a  month,  surrendered 
within  the  week,  when  the  real  bombardjueut 


DISMANTLED    CUPOLA. 

[Newspaper  Illustrations. 

began.  Indeed,  the  only  reason  why  all  the 
forts  in  the  ring  around  Liege  were  not  quickly 
reduced  was  the  difficvilty  encountered  by  the 
Germans  in  bringing  up  these  monstrous  engines 
and  moving  them  into  position. 

Although  many  rumours  had  been  rife  on 
this  subject,  it  was  not  until  September  22, 
more  than  a  month  after  the  centre  of  war 
interest  liad  been  shifted  from  Liege,  that  any 
detailed  account  of  the  method  by  which  these 
big  42cm.  (16.4in.)  siege  guns  travelled  was  re- 
ceived. For  its  hauling  each  gun  required  no 
fewer  than  1 3  traction  engines.  Each  gun  was  in 
four  pieces  and  each  piece  was  drawn  by  three 
engines,  the  extra  engine  going  ahead  to  test 
the  road  and  being  used  as  a  helper  up  hills. 
The  engines  were  all  of  the  broad-wheeled 
steam-roller  type,  and  it  was  noted,  as  a  sort 
of  compliment  to  British  engineering,  that 
very  nearly  all  the  engines  bore  the  name  plates 
of  an  English  firm.  The  delay  in  getting  these 
guns  for  ward  was  not  due  to  the  slow  pace 
of  the  traction  engines,  but  to  the  difficulty  of 
finding  or  making  roads  suitable  for  such  heavy 
traffic. 

During  the  first  few  days  of  assault  upon 
Liege  these  siege  guns  were  not  available  ;  and 
the  Belgians  seemed  stUl  to  be  fighting  with 
success  vintil  the  morning  of  the  7th,  when  the 
German  enveloping  movement  extended  to  the 
north-east  beyond  Fort  Barchon  and  Fort 
Pontisse  became  involved.  On  the  opposite  side 
of  the  ring  fortress — namely,  the  extreme  south- 
west— Fort  Fl^malle  was  also  attacked,  being 
bombarded    Uke    Ppatisse    from    afivo^    tllQ 


240 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Mexise,  which  ran  close  to  both  of  these  forts  on 
the  south-eastern  side  and  through  the  town  of 
Liege,  which  lay  in  a  direct  line  between  them. 

This,  however,  was  the  limit  for  the  time 
being  of  the  effective  range  of  the  German 
artillery  from  the  wooded  heights  south  of  the 
Meuse ;  and  the  forts  of  Loncin,  Lantin,  and 
Liers,  on  the  north-west  side  of  the  town  of 
Liege,  were  able  to  hold  out  and,  with  the  aid 
of  the  small  but  mobile  and  energetic  force 
which  General  Leman  still  maintained  in  the 
open,  to  embarrass  all  the  attempts  of  the 
Germans  to  cross  the  Meuse  in  force. 

It  would  almost  seem  as  if  the  Belgian  head- 
quarters were  unaware  of  the  possible  value 
which  the 'Second  line  of  defence,  consisting  of 
the  four  north-western  forts  with  the  river 
Meuse  across  the  whole  front  at  a  distance  of 
about  five  mUes,  might  have  possessed  if  it  had 
been  strongly  held.  Even  with  the  skeleton 
force  at  his  disposal  General  Leman  was 
able  to  hold  up  the  main  force  of 
the  enemy  for  days  on  the  other  side  of 
the  river.  Even  so  late  as  August  21  these 
forts  were  still  able  to  harass  the  Germans  by 
destroying  their  pontoon  bridges  across  the 
Meuse.    One  Belgian  gun  alone  had,  it  was  said. 


succeeded       in       smashing       ten       of      these 
structures. 

On  Thursday,  August  13,  however,  the  boom- 
ing of  the  heavy  guns  reconmienced  after  two 
days  of  qvdetness.  The  Germans  had  succeeded 
at  last  in  getting  them  across  the  Meuse  and 
through  the  town  of  Liege.  Such  elaborate 
machines  of  war  were  these  terror-striking 
guns  that  the  German  gunners  were  not  com- 
petent to  handle  them.  This  was  done  by 
specialists  from  the  factories  of  Messrs.  Krupp  i 
and  no  doubt  their  admiration  of  the  short  work 
which  they  made  of  the  Belgian  defences  was 
sweetened  by  patriotic  recollections  of  the  way 
in  which  Messrs.  Krupp,  on  one  exciise  after 
another,  had  delayed  delivery  of  fortress  guns 
ordered  by  the  Belgian  Government  until  it 
was  too  late.  Promptitude  and  dispatch  were 
not  characteristics  of  Messrs.  Krupp' s  dealings 
with  a  neutral  Power  upon  which  Germany  was 
planning  a  secret  attack.  The  guns,  however, 
had  no  more  qualms  of  conscience  than  the 
Krupp  experts  who  handled  them.  They  at 
any  rate  did  their  business  for  the  Germans  with 
promptitude  and  dispatch.  The  forts  were 
silenced  in  two  hours,  one  being  destroyed  in 
four  shots. 


GERMAN  SOLDIERS  STANDING  ON  ONE  OF  THE  OVERTURNED  BELGIAN  GUNS. 

{NewspaptT  IliustraHons. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


241 


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GROUND  SURROUNDING  ONE  OF  THE  LIEGE  FORTS. 
Showing  shattered  armour  plate.  . 


[Dailv  Mirror. 


Nothing  like  these  guns  had  been  expected, 
otherwise  no  doubt  much  greater  efforts  would 
have  been  made  to  prevent  them  from  being 
brought  across  the  Me  use  ;  for,  as  it  was,  they 
introduced  a  new  factor  which  entirely  vitiated 
all  the  calculations  of  the  Allies  as  to  the 
holding  power  of  the  fortresses  of  Liege  and 
Namur. 

Owing  to  the  departure  of  the  field  troops 
and  the  flight  of  the  populace,  the  demoUtion  of 
the  forts  and  the  capture  of  General  Leman 
with  the  survivors  of  his  staff,  followed  by  a 
rigorous  German  occupation  of  the  place, 
nothing  in  the  shape  of  an  authentic  record  of 
the  last  days  of  Liege  before  its  fall  has  been 
available ;  but  the  following  facts  deserve 
permanent  record. 

The  German  attack  commenced  on  the  night 
of  Tuesday,  August  4,  with  an  advance  of  the 
7th  Army  Corps  against  the  Forts  Fleron  and 
Evegnee.  The  point  was  well  chosen  because 
the  approach  was  made  through  undulating 
and  heavily-wooded  country,  in  which  the 
troops  were  able  to  occupy  a  natural  semi- 
circle, opposite  which  an  interval  of  more  than 
three  miles  separated  Fleron  from  Fort  Chaud- 
fontaine  on  her  right.  This  space  was,  of  course, 
strongly  entrenched  and  occupied  by  Belgian 
troops  full  of  the  courage  and  confidence  en- 
gendered by  their  previous  successes.  This  was 
shown  by  the  fate  of  the  3rd  Battahon  of  the 
German  125th  Regiment,  which,  in  taking 
up  position,  got  too  close  to  the  Belgian  lines 
and  was  cut  to  oieces.     Bv  thfi  lurid  light  of 


subsequent  events  such  successes  seem  trivial 
indeed ;  but  the  excitement  of  the  moment 
had  magnified  them  into  victories.  Neverthe- 
less, had  the  Germans  been  able  to  employ  the 
same  tactics  here  as  they  did  subsequently 
at  Namur  and  deferred  action  until  they  were 
able  to  concentrate  an  insupportable  artillery 
fire  from  heavy  guns  simultaneously  upon  all 
the  forts  and  the  trenches  between  them,  the 
result  would  not  have  been  many  hours  in 
doubt.  Instead,  after  an  ineffective  bombard- 
ment of  the  two  forts  selected  for  attack  with 
badly -timed  shells  which  made  no  impression 
upon  them,  masses  of  infantry  were  sent  forward. 
Of  course,  the  inevitable  happened.  Under  the 
glare  of  searchlights  the  solid  ranks  of  men 
were  simply  mowed  down  by  machine  guns  and 
field  guns,  until  the  shattered  remnant  was 
ripe  for  retreat  before  the  bayonets  with  which 
the  already  victorious  Belgians  charged  upon 
them  from  the  trenches. 

Thus  the  first  attack  of  the  7th  Army  Corps 
was  brilliantly,  if  easily,  repulsed  ;  and  on 
the  morning  of  the  5th  the  Liege  forts  on  the 
east  opened  fire  upon  the  Germans  and  the  latter 
replied  ;  but,  although  the  noise  of  the  guns  drove 
the  inhabitants  of  Liege  into  their  cellars 
at  first,  it  was  soon  discovered  that  there  was 
little  danger,  because  the  enemy  evidently 
had  few  guns  in  position  and  these  were  out- 
classed by  the  artillery  in  the  forts.  So  during 
the  day  most  of  the  Liegeois  learned,  as  besieged 
peoples  do  so  qxoickly,  to  play  hide-and  seek  with 
the  shells,  bolting  into  shelter  only  when  the 


> 


242 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


look-out  bell,  signalling  the  flash  of  a  German 
gvm,  was  heard. 

During  the  day,  however,  there  were  ominous 
rumours  that  the  Germans  had  threatened  a 
heavy  bombardment  of  the  town  unless  both  it 
and  the  surrounding  forts  were  surrendered ; 
and  it  was  stated  that,  while  the  Mayor,  in  order 
to  save  the  helpless  houpes  from  destruction, 
was  then  willing  to  jaeld.  General  Leman 
decisively  refused  to  give  up  the  forts.  Then 
real  panic  seized  parb  of  the  population,  who 
stormed  the  train  leaving  the  city,  while  many 
returned  to  their  cellars. 

So  the  day  of  dread  passed,  and  on  the  follow- 
ing day  (August  6)  the  Germans,  having  got 
their  heavy  guns  into  position,  commenced 
bombardment  of  the  town  as  well  as  the  forts. 
One  shell  completely  wrecked  the  roof  of  the 
Cathedral,  and  the  University — which  the 
Germans  appear  to  have  mistaken  for  the 
Government  House,  as  they  made  it  a  special 
target — was  destroyed ;  but  most  of  the  buildings 
were  still  intact  when  the  town  surrendered, 
though  the  forts  still  strove  to  maintain  the  un- 
equal struggle. 

Meanwhile  the  invaders  marched  into  Liege, 
singing  patriotic  songs,  but  maintaining  good 
order  ;    although  a  hint  of  the  German  methods 


was  immediately  given  to  the  people  in  a 
proclamation  by  the  German  Commander 
that  if  a  single  shot  were  fired  the  town  would  be 
devastated. 

The  actual  bombardment  of  the  town  occupied 
only  seven  ho\xrs,  with  an  interval  of  one  hovir  ; 
but  many  people  were  killed  and  woimded  and 
the  general  effect  was  so  terrible  that  further 
resistance  would  have  been  viseless  folly  on  the 
part  of  the  unprotected  town,  since  it  covild  do 
nothing  now  to  aid  the  doomed  forts. 

To  understand  why  Liege  thus  surrendered 
in  the  midst  of  a  seemingly  brilliant  defence, 
we  must  realize  that  when  the  attack 
which  conmaenced  on  August  5  was 
continued  until  the  morning  of  the  6th  by 
the  united  strength  of  the  7th,  10th,  and  9th 
Corps,  the  chief  brunt  of  the  extended  assault 
fell  farther  to  the  south  between  the  forts 
of  Flemalle,  Boncelles,  and  Emboixrg  ;  and  to 
meet  this  the  Belgian  general  was  compelled 
to  move  down  his  field  force  to  fill  the  entrench- 
ments between  those  forts.  Although  here 
also  the  German  advance  of  massed  infantry 
was  again  met  and  repulsed,  the  simultaneovis 
reopening  of  the  attack  upon  Forts  Fleron  and 
Evegnee  warned  General  Leman  of  the  in- 
adequacy of  his  force  to  hold  the  entire  -S  3 -mile 


THE  LIEGE  FORTS 
A  photograph  taken  after  bombardment. 


[Ntwspapn  JUustrations. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


243 


EFFECT     OF    FIRING     ON    CUPOLAS. 


[C.  Bfndall. 


'Top  dotted  line  shows  the  line  of  flight  of  siege  howitzer  shell,  finally  bursting  on  top  of  cupola,  the  exact 

range  having  been  ascertained  by  the  Germans  long  before  war  was  declared.     Tne  bottom  dotted  lines 

represent  fleld-gun  fire  and  show  shell  glancing  off  cupola. 


circle  of  the  fortress.  He  wisely  took  the  warning, 
and  even  in  the  hour  of  victory  successfully  sent 
back  his  little  field  army  across  theMeuse,  leav- 
ing the  town  of  Liege  open  to  the  invaders. 

Thus  the  very  peculiar  position  was  created 
of  a  great  industrial  city,  only  partially  demo- 
lished by  bombardment,  peaceably  occupied  in 
force  by  an  enemy  who  had  appointed  a  military 
government  and  had  entrenched  his  forces 
in  the  suburbs,  surrovinded  by  the  forts  which 
had  been  constructed  for  its  defence  and  were 
still  occupied  by  the  defenders. 

The  explanation  of  this  unique  situation 
was,  however,  simple.  There  was  now  nothing 
whatever  to  prevent  the  free  passage  of  German 
troops,  especially  in  small  parties  and  at  night, 
through  the  wide  intervals  between  the  forts, 
thvis  keeping  open  the  communications  between 
the  investing  force  and  the  force  in  oc  cupation  of 
the  town ;  while  on  the  other  side  the  Belgian  forts 
refrained  from  opening  fire  upon  the  town  fro  n 
patriotic  considerations.  In  war,  however, 
obedience  to  the  nobler  sentiments  is  usually — 
at  any  rate  temporarily — costly,  and  the 
Germans  in  Liege  of  co\xrse  took  advantage  of 
the  inaction  of  the  forts  to  entrench  themselves 
more  completely  while  the  siege  batteries  were 
being  erected  for  the  final  demolition  of  the  forts. 

Thvis  ended  Act  I.  of  the  drama  of  Liege; 
and  althovigh  the  fortune  of  war  had  no  choice 
but  to  declare  on  the  side  of  the  "  big  batta- 
lions"— or,  perhaps  it  would  be  more  correct 
to  say,  the  "  big  guns " —  the  honours  of 
the  war  lay  so  completely  on  the  Belgian 
side   that     the     report  —  often     contradicted 


and  ,as  often  "  confirmed "  —  that  the 
German  Commander,  General  von  Emmich, 
had  committed  suicide  excited  no  surprise. 
Whatever  the  orders  given  to  him  may  have 
been  and  however  great  may  have  been  the 
difficulties  which  he  had  encountered  in  bringing 
up  his  heavy  siege  gtins,  the  attempt  to  rush  a 
modern  fortress  with  mere  masses  of  flesh  and 
blood  was  not  even  magnificent — and  it  cer- 
tainly was  not  war, 

A  remarkable  contrast  to  the  unfortunate, 
blundering  von  Emmich  was  presented  by 
General  Leman,  the  astute  and  cool-headed 
defender  of  Liege.  Although  a  martinet  in 
discipline,  his  own  life  was  so  strictly  soldierly 
that  he  commanded  the  absolute  loyalty  of 
all  ranks  under  him.  Like  Lord  Roberts,  he 
seemed  incapable  of  fatigue ;  and  it  is  related  of 
him,  before  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  that  he 
would  often  after  a  ride  of  30  miles  return  to  the 
Military  School,  of  which  he  was  Commandant, 
and  discuss  strategical  and  tactical  problems 
with  his  officers  until  early  morning.  Many 
other  anecdotes  are  told  to  his  credit,  for  he 
evidently  possessed  the  remarkable  personality 
which  almost  always  distinguishes  the  born 
commander.  Thus  the  two  most  striking 
incidents  which  are  narrated  by  the  survivors 
of  Liege  relate  to  him  personally.  One  of  these 
is  to  the  effect  that  by  means  of  a  clever  ruse, 
"  the  character  of  which  [says  the  special 
correspondent  who  narrates  it]  had  better  be 
left  undescribed,"  the  General  tempted  a 
number  of  Uhlans  to  enter  the  town  of  Liege 
on  the  morning  of  August  6  in  the  hope  of 


244 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


captixring  him.  The  Uhlans  came  in  two 
patrols,  every  man  of  the  fii'st  being  killed 
and  of  the  second  captured. 

The  other  incident  occurred  when,  according 
to  the  Brussels  Special  Correspondent  of  The 
Times,  two  German  spies,  disguised  as  French 
officers,  gained  access  to  the  town  and  desired 
to  be  conducted  to  the  General.  "  Their  plan 
miscarried,  however,  and  they  were  arrested 
just  in  the  nick  of  time.  They  were  taken  out 
and  shot  at  one  of  the  gates  of  the  town." 

Although  such  narratives  may  have  little 
connexion  with  the  serious  history  of  the  war, 
they  are  interesting  as  showing  the  great  in- 
fluence    which     the     personality     of     General 


No.  1  DIAGRAM  SHOWS  A  CUPOLA 
RAISED  FOR  FIRING.    No.  2  SHOWS 
CUPOLA  LOWERED.     [C.  Bendall. 

These  cupolas  were  main  features  of  the  Brial- 
mont  system  of  ring-fortresses,  which  have  been 
proved  by  this  war  to  be  incapable  of  withstand- 
ing artillery  heavier  than  their  own. 


Leman  had  upon  the  opening  phase  of  the 
campaign.  It  is  probable  that  when,  as  com- 
mander of  the  Liege  garrison,  he  was  shut 
up  in  the  fortress,  and  later  was  nearly  killed 
in  the  explosion  of  Fort  Loncin  and  taken 
prisoner  by  the  Germans,  Belgium  lost  the 
services  of  one  of  its  finest  soldiers. 

In  addition  to  his  practical  mastery  of 
strategy  and  tactics  in  the  field,  he  was  a 
recognized  expert  in  Roman  law,  military 
architecture,  and  engineering  science.  With 
ready  skill  he  had  so  handled  the  opening  phase 
of  the  great  game  of  war,  which  his  country 
was  playing  for  her  very  existence,  as  to 
inflict  greater  damage  than  perhaps  even  he 
could  have  hoped  upon  the  enemy,  and  then 
to  extract  his  force  from  a  position  that  was 
destined  to  become  almost  immediately  hopeless. 
Thus  he  brilliantly  commenced  that  long 
series  of  withdrawals  before  superior  force 
which  marked  the  whole  of  the  first  chapter 
of  the  great  war,  until  in  fact  the  wearying 
German  hosts  were  brought  up  "  with  a  round 
turn  "  almost  under  the  walls  of  Paris. 

The  great  fault  of  the  German  attack  upon 
Liege  was  its  total  lack  of  co-ordination.  It 
commenced  with  an  ineffective  bombardment 
against  which  the  Belgian  artillery,  whose  fire 
was  accurate  and  well-directed,  easily  held 
their  own,  with  the  result  that  during  the  three 
hours'  duel  two  heavy  pieces  of  German 
artillery  had  been  destroyed  by  the  guns  of 
Fort  Evegnee,  where  not  a  man  was  killed  or 
wounded  and  the  cupola  was  undamaged. 
Having  thus  completely  failed  to  prepare  the 
way  for  an  assault,  the  German  commander, 
nevertheless,  flung  a  solid  army  corps  at  the 
fortress.  As  was  inevitable,  the  advancing 
ranks  were  cut  down  like  standing  wheat  by 
the  concentrated  fire  from  the  trenches  and  the 
forts.  The  trenches  were  never  reached,  and 
the  7th  Army  Corps  staggered  back  more  than 
decimated. 

Next  day,  when  it  was  too  late  to  repair  his 
initial  blunder.  General  von  Emmich  began  to 
make  some  use  of  his  superior  strength  by 
bringing  the  10th  Army  Corps,  the  famous 
Iron  Division  of  Brandenburg,  to  the  support 
of  the  7th,  and  thus  extending  the  front  of  hia 
operations  so  that  five  of  the  Liege  forts, 
instead  of  two  only,  were  involved.  Later  the 
9th  Army  Corps  and  a  division  of  cavalry  were 
brought  up  to  assist  the  other  two,  and  thus  the 
entire  force  of  120,000  men  to  which  the  Kaiser 
had  entrusted  the  prospective  honoiir  of 
sweeping  through  Belgium  to  the  French 
frontier  was  held  up  before  Liege  by  General 
Leman  and  40,000    Belgians.     So    unequal   a 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


245 


ANOTHER  TYPE  OF  GERMAN  GUN— SIEGE  HOWITZER. 


{Record  Press. 


contest  could  not,  however,  be  maintained  in- 
definitely ;  and  although  the  second  German 
onslaught  was  no  more  effective  than  the  first, 
the  ill -served  artillery  proving  unable  to  make 
more  impression  on  the  forts  than  the  mis- 
directed infantry  fire  had  upon  the  trenches, 
while  the  massed  cavalry  had  no  opportunities 
at  all,  nevertheless  General  Leman  recognized 
that  he  had  done  all  that  could  be  prudently 
attempted  to  stay  the  German  advance,  and 
adroitly  withdrew  before  his  powerful  enemy 
could  recover  from  his  second  staggering  blow. 

The  chief  excuse  which  can  be  offered  for 
the  German  mismanagement  of  the  attack 
upon  Liege  is  that  the  Belgian  resistance  must 
have  come  upon  General  von  Emmich  as  a 
surprise.  All  his  plans  were  made  with  a  view 
to  a  rapid  advance  through  Belgium  towards 
France.  These  plans  were  in  complete  readiness 
before  the  ultimatum  to  Belgium  was  sent. 
Indeed,  a  calculation  of  the  time  necessarily 
occupied  by  the  German  corps  in  getting  from 
their  headquarters  in  Germany  to  the  frontier 
shows  that  they  must  have  conunenced  their 
march  on  July  31,  before  the  declaration  of 
war.  The  disposition  of  the  entire  Belgian 
force  at  the  time  was  well  known  to  the  German 
staff,  and  no  considerable  part  of  the  Belgian 
Field  Army  was  on  August  3  nearer  than 
Diest,  where  the  3rd  Division,  under  General 
Leman,  was  stationed.  So  there  is  little  doubt 
tstiat  the  German  commander,  when  he  arranged 


his  night  attack  upon  Liege  on  August  5, 
imagined  that  he  fiad  only  to  reckon  with  the 
garrison  of  the  forts  and  one  mixed  brigade 
of  the  Belgian  Army.  His  intention  appar- 
ently was  to  engage  heavily  the  three  easterii 
forts  with  his  artillery  and  push  his  forces 
through  the  wide  intervals  between  them, 
when  the  town  of  Liege  in  the  centre  woiild  have 
been  at  his  mercy.  What  he  had  not  cal- 
culated upon  apparently  was  the  possibility 
that  in  the  48  hours  which  had  elapsed 
between  the  delivery  of  the  ultimatum  and  the 
preparation  for  attack.  General  Leman,  with 
the  3rd  Belgian  Division,  would,  by  forced 
marches,  have  covered  the  80  miles  from  Diest 
to  Liege  and  be  occupying  the  trenches  between 
the  forts.  This  probably  explains  why  the 
German  attack  was  delivered  in  such  a  way  as 
to  render  disaster  inevitable  in  the  circtun- 
stances  ;  and  it  would  seem  to  show  that  at  the 
outset  the  blind  confidence  of  the  Germans, 
that  Belgiimi  would  bo  unable  and  unwilling 
to  offer  serious  resistance,  was  such  as  to 
render  them  temporarily  oblivious  of  the 
plainest  dictates  of  prudence. 

In  the  subsequent  phase  of  the  campaign, 
indeed,  when  German  army  corps  were  crowd- 
ing upon  the  rear  of*  the  British  Army,  as  it 
retired,  fighting  step  by  step,  towards  Paris, 
there  was  always  the  same  waste  of  German 
troops  through  sending  them  forward  in  masses 
against  an  entrenched  enemy.     But  there  this 


246 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


prodigality  of  human  life  may  have  been  de- 
liberately calculated  expenditure,  the  only  weak 
point  of  the  calculation  being  that  it  under- 
estimated the  steadiness  of  the  British  soldier. 
Had  the  Germans  been  able  to  smother  Tommy 
Atkins,  even  with  heaps  of  their  own  slain, 
the  game  would  have  been  worth  the  stakes. 
It  is  just  possible,  too,  that  even  at  Liege  the 
importance  of  swift  passage  through  Belgium 
in  order  to  strike  France  down  before  help  could 
come  to  her  so  dominated  all  other  considera- 
tions that  prudence  in  tactics  was  thrown  to 
the  winds.  These  are  the  opportunities  of  the 
Nemesis  which  waits  upon  unjust  invaders ; 
and  the  disaster  which  marked  the  first  step  of 
the  Germans  on  Belgian  soil  was  ominous. 

It  was  not  so  accepted  in  Berlin,  however, 
for  news  came  thence  that  on  the  7th  the  happy 
tidings  of  "  the  fall  of  Liege  "  had  spread  with 
lightning-like  rapidity  throughout  the  city 
and  created  boundless  enthusiasm.  The  Kaiser 
himself,  never  reluctant  to  pose  with  theatrical, 
effect,  sent  his  own  uniformed  aide-de-camp 
out  to  the  crowds  before  the  Palace  to  give  the 
news,  and  policemen  on  bicycles  dashed  along 
Unter  den  Linden  with  the  joyful  tidings  ! 
Imagination  fails  utterly  to  conceive  a  similar 
scene  being  enacted  before  Buckingham  Palace 
and  in  the  Mall  over  the  first  reports  of  a  pre- 


liminary success  in  war.  But  allowances  must 
be  made  for  the  Germans,  who  knew  at  the  back 
of  their  minds  that  their  Emperor  had  staked 
all  the  interests  of  their  country  upon  a  gambler's 
throw.  No  wonder  that  they  listened  with 
excitement  to  the  first  rattle  of  the  dice,  and  the 
German  Press  rapturously  exclaimed  that  the 
line  of  advance  into  Northern  France  was 
assured. 

This  was  not,  of  course,  exactly  the  way  to 
state  the  case.  So  far  as  the  fighting  which  had 
then  taken  place  was  concerned,  the  advantage 
had  all  been  on  the  side  of  the  Belgians.  Yet, 
as  happened  more  than  once  during  this  first 
phase  of  the  great  war,  the  conclusions  drawn 
from  false  news  of  "  victories  "  in  Berlin  were 
nearer  to  the  truth  than  the  hopes  based  upon 
accurate  accounts  of  successes  in  Paris  or 
London.  The  explanation  of  this  seeming 
anomaly  was  that  the  Germans  were  fighting  at 
this  stage — -as  they  had  carefully  arranged  that 
they  should  be  fighting — with  preponderating 
odds  in  their  favour.  So  immense  was  the 
volume  of  their  initial  moving  strength  that 
local  reverses  scarcely  checked  it  at  all.  They 
caused  little  more  than  swirls  in  the  resistless 
tide  of  advance. 

So  when  Berlin,  shouting  itself  hoarse  over  a 
victory  which  had  not  been  won,  declared  that 


ONE  OF  THE  FORTS  AT  LIEGE  AFTER  BOMBARDMENT. 
Showing  damage  caused  by  German  siege  guns. 


[Daily   Minott 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


247 


ANOTHER  VIEW  OF  THE  RUINED  BRIDGE. 


the  way  was  now  open  to  the  French  frontier, 
it  was  nearer  to  the  truth  than  London,  which 
calculated  that,  if  40,000  Belgians  could  thus 
check  the  German  hosts  at  Liege,  the  combined 
French  and  Belgian  armies  might  fight  a  de- 
cisively victorious  battle  not  much  farther  west. 

At  that  time  people  in  England  were  hot 
thinking  much  about  what  the  British  soldiers 
might  be  able  to  do.  They  had  heard  that 
there  was  to  be  a  substantial  "  expeditionary 
force  "  ;  but  the  very  title  suggested  its  em- 
ployment in  some  side-issue  of  the  war,  and  all 
eyes  were  fixed  in  hope  upon  the  gallant 
defenders  of  Liege. 

Disappointed  bewilderment  therefore  ensued 
when  it  was  seen  that,  although  the  Berlin 
reports  of  victory  were  indubitably  false,  the 
subsequent  course  of  events  was  no  better  than 
if  they  had  been  true.  The  German  hosts 
poured  through  Liege  into  the  heart  of  Belgium, 
and  the  fog  of  war  settled  deeply  over  the  ring 
of  forts,  which  daily  bulletins  assured  us  were 
*'  still  holding  out." 

Thus  it  was  that  the  crucial  test  of  war  had 
definitely  decided  the  much-debated  question 
of  the  value  of  great  ring-fortresses  like. 
Liege  and  Namur.  Liege  and  Namur 
were  sisters,  and  it  is  not  possible  to  draw 
definite  conclusions  from  the  determined  re- 
sistance which  one  was  able  to  ofter  to  the 
invader,  without  considering  also  the  reasons 
why  the  other  fell  so  quickly.  For  both  of  theS3 
strongholds  represented  the  mature  genius  of 


Brialmont  in  the  science  ,of  fortification ; 
and  the  success  or  failure  of  both  to  hold  the 
Germans  would  have  been  taken  by  rival  schools' 
of  theorists  as  conclusive  evidence  for  or  against 
the  principle  of  ring -fortresses.  What  actually 
happened  was  therefore  entirely  unexpec  ed 
by  both  sides  ;  for  while  Liege  seemed  to  crown 
the  memory  of  Brialmont  with  glory,  all  the 
costly  and  extensive  fortifications  of  Namur 
served  no  better  than  a  trap  for  its  unfortunate 
defenders. 

The  fact  is  that  both  were  strongholds  which 
would  have  been  absolutely  impregnable  if 
two  conditions  had  been  fulfilled.  One  con- 
dition was  that  the  cupolas  of  the  forts  in  their 
beds  of  cement  should  be  strong  enough  to 
resist  the  enemy's  heaviest  guns  ;  and  the  other 
was  that  an  adequate  force  should  be  available 
to  hold  the  trenches  which  occupied  the  intervals 
between  the  forts.  If  these  conditions  were 
present  Brialmont's  ring  fortresses  might  be 
compared  to  gigantic  entrenched  camps,  with 
invincible  artillery  placed  at  all  the  numerous 
salient  angles.  Such  &■  position  would  un- 
doubtedly be  impregnable.  But  at  Liege  one, 
and  at  Namur  the  other,  of  these  conditions 
was  not  present.  Namur  fell  quickly  because 
the  Germans,  profiting  by  the  experience  of 
Liege,  had  brought  up  artillery  of  sufficient 
strength  to  smash  the  forts  by  bombardment 
at  the  conmiencement.  Liege  also  fell  quickly 
as  a  military  position,  although  the  forts  held 
out  gallantly,  because  the  adequate  force  to 


248 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


GERMAN  SOLDIERS  MARCHING  THROUGH  LikGE. 


occupy  33  miles  of  entrenchments  was  lacking. 
This  was  not  generally  understood  outside  the 
war  councils  of  General  Joffre  and  the  Belgian 
King.  In  Berlin  the  people  rejoiced  in  the 
fruits  of  a  fictitious  victory,  and  in  Britain 
the  people  wondered  why  victory  had  no 
apparent  fruits. 

Even  with  all  the  facts  of  the  situation  before 
us,  we  are  inclined  to  wonder  at  the  self- 
sacrificing  steadiness  with  which  General  Leman 
adhered  to  his  part  in  the  general  plan  of  cam- 
paign. The  war  which  was  being  waged  was 
so  vast  that  his  handful  of  40,000  men  at  Liege 
was  only  a  pawn  in  the  game.  Yet  it  was  a 
pawn  which  in  the  gambit  selected  had  occupied 
so  brilliant  a  position  that  a  less  cool-headed 
and  less  dutiful  player  would  have  been  excused 
in  history  if  he  had  been  tempted  to  sacrifice 
it  in  a  glorious  "  check  "  to  the  opponent.  But 
checkmate  was  the  end  for  which  the  Allies 
were  playing  ;  and  in  the  alert  and  mobile 
Belgian  Army — which,  more  than  a  month  after 
the  defence  of  Liege  had  become  past 
history,  commenced  to  harass  the  Germa.n 
army  corps  hurrying  Pariswards  to  help  their 
comrades  sorely  pressed  by  those  pestilent 
British — were  many  men  who  would  have  been 
sleeping  in  their  graves  among  the  ruins  of 
Liege's  defences  if  General  Leman  had  not 
known  when  to  move  back  his  pawn. 

It  was  dismal  experience  of  the  same  kind 
as  General  French  endured  when  the  compact 
British  force,  admirably  fitted  in  every  detail 
ho  be  the  spearhead  of  a  victorious  advance,  was 


[Netpspaper  /llustrations. 

compelled  day  after  day,  week  after  week,  to 
fight  rearguard  actions  against  superior  forces 
in  order  to  keep  the  general  plan  of  campaign 
intact.  The  reward  of  such  devotion  to  duty 
may  seem  slow  in  coming,  but  it  is  sure  ;  and 
in  the  aggressive  activity  of  the  Belgian  Army 
of  Antwerp,  even  after  Namur  had  fallen  and 
Brussels  had  been  occupied.  General  Leman, 
then  a  prisoner  in  Germany,  must  have  seen, 
with  justifiable  pride,  a  factor  of  ultimate  success 
to  which  his  own  self-denial  had  largely  con- 
tributed . 

But  the  really  great  service  which  the  Belgians 
who  defended  Liege  so  gallantly  had  done  for 
the  cause  of  the  Allies  lay  in  shattering  the 
Continental  superstition  that  German  armies 
were  invincible.  This  did  not  affect  the  British 
soldier,  who  always  has  a  cheery  confidence — 
which  this  war  has  done  nothing  to  shake — 
that  he  is  as  good  a  man  as  anybody  else  in  any 
company  into  which  he  may  happen  to  be 
thrown  by  the  exigencies  of  service.  But  every 
man  in  the  French  ranks  was  the  son  of  parents 
who  had  seen  France,  after  prolonged  and 
desperate  resistance,  forced  under  the  heel  of 
Prussia  ;  and  just  when  he  was  nerving  himself 
to  the  supreme  effort  to  endeavour  to  right  lus 
country's  ancient  wrong  in  spite  of  this  previous 
disparity  of  strength,  it  was  like  a  message  of 
hope  from  heaven  to  learn  that  40,000  Belgians 
had  held  back  120,000  Germans  for  days, 
slaughtering  them  wholesale  and  coming  out 
of  the  encounter  almost  unscathed  themselves. 
Thvis  General  Leman's  success,  fruitless  as  it 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


249 


may  nave  seemed  in  tactical  results  from 
a  supernciai  point  of  view,  was  infinitely 
valuable  to  the  Allied  Armies  in  consequence 
of  the  new  spirit  which  it  gave  to  all  the 
Continental  enemies  of  Germany.  It  was 
the  first  prick  to  the  bubble  of  the  German 
reputation. 

Equally  important  was  another  result  of 
General  Leman's  success  :  that  it  threw  out 
of  gear  the  whole  time-table  of  the  German 
campaign.  In  any  case  this  would  have  been  a 
serious  matter,  because  all  the  detailed  arrange- 
ments in  connexion  with  the  transport  of  a 
great  army  are  necessarily  co-ordinated  with  the 
utmost  precision.  An  army  in  the  field  is  a  vast 
and  complicated  fighting  machine,  of  which 
every  nxit  and  bolt  must  be  exactly  in  its  right 
place  at  the  right  moment  to  ensure  smooth 
worldng.  If  any  part  of  it  is  seriously  and 
suddenly  obstructed,  the  whole  machine  may 
be  unexpectedly  delayed,  and  it  is  true  of  all 
armies  in  the  field  that  unexpected  delays  are 
very  dangerous. 

In  the  case  of  the  German  Army  which  was 
invading  Belgium  this  was  doubly  true,  because 
the  necessity  for  promptitude  and  dispatch  in 
the  performance  of  the  task  which  had 
been  allotted  to  it  was  paramount,  inasmuch 
as  the  greater  part  of  it  would  almost 
certainly  be  required,  after  defeating 
France,  to  hi^rry  back  in  order  to  confront 
Russia.  For  this  reason  delay  at  the 
outset     of     its      advance      amounted     to     a 


defeat  miuch  more  serious  in  its  consequences 
than  there  had  been  any  reason  to  hope 
that  the  Belgian  Army  would  be  able  to 
inflict. 

To  this  extent,  then,  it  was  easy  to  award  the 
honour  due  to  General  Leman's  gallant  little 
force  ;  and  it  was  a  happy  day  for  Belgians 
all  over  the  world — except  in  Germany — when 
the  news  of  the  Battle  of  Liege  was  received. 
In  Berlin,  indeed,  by  some  process  of  sancti- 
monious casuistry,  Belgium,  against  whom  the 
Kaiser's  Government  admitted  that  a  wrong 
had  been  done,  was  regarded  thenceforward  as 
an  associate  of  the  Evil  One  and  a  sort  of  rebel 
against  God,  because  she  fought  against  the 
wrong.  No  German  seemed  to  realize  that 
Belgium  by  admitting  the  German  Army  would 
in  effect  be  declaring  war  upon  France,  and  t  hat 
even  the  almighty  Kaiser  could  not  at  that 
moment  have  protected  Belgium's  western 
frontier  from  the  hostile  onslaught  which  France 
would  have  been  justified  in  making.  But 
in  all  the  world,  except  Germany,  the  heroism 
of  Belgium  was  worthily  acknowledged,  and 
the  newspaper  headlines  of  "  Gallant  Little 
Belgium "  in  every  language  must  have 
gladdened  the  oyes  of  Belgian  exiles,  who  were,  of 
course,  not  unaware  how  often  in  the  past  the 
phrase  "  les  braves  beiges  "  had  been  used  in 
irony.  Thus  time  brings  its  revenges  and  teaches 
mankind  that  in  the  issue  between  right  and 
wrong  the  strong  are  still  liable  to  be  humbiod 
by  the  weak. 


GERMAN  SENTRIES  ON  THE  BANKS  OF  THE  MEUSE. 


> 


250 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


These  considerations  rendered  it  difficvilt  for 
contemporary  onlookers  to  appreciate  the  kind  of 
courage — moral  coiirage  of  a  high  order — which 
the  Belgian  commander  displayed  in  deliberately 
depriving  himself  of  the  chance  of  winning 
further  glory,  in  order  that  he  might  not  imperil 
the  success  of  the  war  drtuna  as  a  whole  by 
over-acting  the  minor  part  which  had  been 
assigned  to  him. 

For,  when  the  psychological  moment  had 
arrived  when,  in  General  Leman's  cool  judgment, 
it  was  time  to  abandon  Liege  as  a  stronghold 
and  use  it  merely  as  a  place  cfarret,  he  had  sent 
back  his  40,000  men  to  their  place  in  the 
Belgian  field  army,  remaining  himself  as 
Military  Governor  of  Liege  in  order  to  co- 
ordinate the  defence  of  the  forts  as  much  as 
possible  and  to  exercise  moral  influence  upon 
the  garrison.  This  is  the  explanation  of  his 
decision  given  by  himself  in  a  pathetic 
letter  written  from  captivity  to  his  master, 
the  King  of  the  Belgians,  narrating  how 
the  Fort  Loncin,  where  he  had  estabUshed 
his    headquarters  when  the  town  of  Liege  had 


been  occupied  by  the  Germans,  was  blown 
up,  "  the  greater  part  of  the  gaTrison  being 
buried  imder  the  ruins."  The  lettf^r 
continues : — 

"  That  I  did  not  lose  my  hfe  in  that 
catastrophe  is  due  to  the  fact  that  my  escort, 
composed  of  Commandant  CoUard,  a  sub-officer 
of  infantry,  who  has  undoubtedly  perished,  the 
gendarme  Thevenin,  and  my  two  orderlies, 
Vanden  Bossche  and  Jos  Lecocq,  drew  me  from 
a  position  of  danger  where  I  was  being 
asphyxiated  by  gas  from  the  exploded 
powder.  I  was  carried  into  a  trench,  where  a 
German  captain  named  Griison  gave  me  drink, 
after  which  I  weis  made  prisoner  and  taken  to 
Liege  in  an  ambulance. 

"  I  am  convinced  that  the  honour  of  our  arms 
has  been  sustained.  I  have  not  stirrendered 
either  the  fortress  or  the  forts.  Deign,  Sire,  to 
pardon  any  defects  in  this  letter.  I  am  physically 
shattered  by  the  explosion  of  Loncin.  Li  Ger- 
many, whither  I  am  proceeding,  my  thoughts 
will  be,  as  they  have  ever  been,  of  Belgium  and 
the  King.     I  would  willingly  have  given  my 


GENERAL  WONTERS  AND  HIS  AIDES-DE-CAMP. 
The  General  who  directed  most  of  the  tactical  moves  against  the  Germans  in  Belgium. 

^Hfwipaptr  lUustrationSt 


THE    TIME 8    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


251 


BELGIANS  LOADING  A  GUN. 
Actual  photograph  taken  in  the  firing  line. 


{Daily  Mirror. 


life  the  better  to  serve  them,  but  death  was 
denied  me." 

It  would  scarcely  be  possible  to  add  a  more 
illuminating  commentary  to  this  simple, 
soldierly  letter  than  the  following  testimony  of 
a  German  officer  : — 

"  General  Leman's  defence  of  Liege  com- 
bined all  that  is  noble,  all  that  is  tragic. 

"  As  long  as  possible  he  inspected  the  forts 
daily  to  see  everything  was  in  order.  By  a 
piece  of  falling  masonry,  dislodged  by  our  guns, 
both  General  Leman's  legs  were  crushed. 
Undaunted  he  visited  the  forts  in  an  auto- 
mobile. Fort  Chaudfontaine  was  destroyed  by 
a  German  shell  dropping  in  the  magazine.  In 
the  strong  Fort  Loncin  General  Leman  decided 
to  hold  his  grotmd  or  die. 

"  When  the  end  was  inevitable  the  Belgians 
disabled  the  last  three  guns  and  exploded  the 
supply  of  shells  kept  by  the  guns  in  readiness. 
Before  this  General  Leman  destroyed  all 
plans,  maps,  and  papers  relating  to  the  de- 
fences. The  food  supplies  were  also  de- 
stroyed. With  about  100  men  General  Leman 
attempted  to  retire  to  another  fort,  but  we  had 
cut  off  their  retreat.  By  this  time  our  heaviest 
guns  were  in  position,  and  a  well-placed  shell 
tore  through  the  cracked  and  battered  masonry 
and  exploded  in  the  main  magazine.     With  a 


thunderous  crash  the  mighty  walls  of  the  fort 
fell.  Pieces  of  stone  and  concrete  25  cubic 
metres  in  size  were  hurled  into  the  air.  When 
the  dust  and  fumes  passed  away  we  stormed  the 
fort  across  ground  literally  strewn  with  the 
bodies  of  the  troops  who  had  gone  out  to  storm 
the  fort  and  never  returned.  All  the  men  in 
the  fort  were  wounded,  and  most  were  uncon- 
scious. A  corporal  with  one  arm  shattered 
valiantly  tried  to  drive  us  back  by  firing  his 
rifle.  Buried  in  the  debris  and  pinned  beneath 
a  massive  beam  was  General  Leman. 

"  '  Respectez  le  general,  il  est  mort,'  said 
an  aide-de-camp. 

"  With  gentleness  and  care,  which  showed 
they  respected  the  man  who  had  resisted  them 
so  valiantly  and  stubbornly,  our  infantry  re- 
leased the  general's  wotmded  form  and  carried 
him  away.  We  thought  him  dead,  but  he  re- 
covered consciousness,  and,  looking  round, 
said,  '  It  is  as  it  is.  The  men  fought  valiantly,* 
and  then,  turning  to  us,  added,  '  Put  in  your 
dispatches  that  I  was  ixnconscious.' 

"  We  brought  him  to  our  commander,  Geueral 
von  Emmich,  and  the  two  generals  saluted. 
We  tried  to  speak  words  of  comfort,  but  he 
was  silent — ^he  is  known  as  the  silent  general. 
'I  was  unconscious.  Be  sure  and  put. that  in 
your  dispatches.'     More  he  woxild  not  i=>ay. 


252 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


"  Extending  his  hand,  our  commander  said, 
*  General,  you  have  gallantly  and  nobly  held 
your  forts.'  General  Leman  replied,  '  I  thank 
you.  Our  troops  have  lived  up  to  their  repu- 
tations.' With  a  smile  he  added^  '  War  is  not 
like  manoeuvres ' — a  reference  to  the  fact  that 
General  von  Ernmich  was  recently  with  General 
Leman  during  the  Belgian  manoeuvres.  Then, 
unbuckling  his  sword,  General  Leman  tendered 
it  to  General  von  Emmich-  '  No,'  replied  the 
German  commander,  with  a  bow ;  '  keep  your 
sword.  To  have  crossed  swords  with  you  has 
been  an  honour,'  and  the  fire  in  General  Leman's 
eye  was  dimmed  by  a  tear." 

Memy  similar  authentic  cases  were  recorded 
during  the  war  of  Germans,  both  officers  and 
men,  behaving  with  true  chivalry  and  kindness 
to  French,  British,  and  Belgian  wounded  and 
prisoners.  If  only  this  had  been  the  guiding 
spirit  of  their  conduct  in  general  ! 

In  the  foregoing,  however,  we  are  anticipating 
the  finale  of  the  last  chapter  of  the  glorious 
story  of  the  defence  of  Liege.  The  forts,  bereft 
of  support  from  the  Belgian  Army  in  the  field, 
with  the  city  and  ancient  citadel  which  they 
were  designed  to  protect  in  ruins,  with  an 
insolent  enemy  in  occupation  lording  it  over  the 
trembling  populace — the  forts  maintained  their 


gallant  resistance,  the  Military  Governor,  shut 
up  in  one  of  them,  continuing  to  exercise,  so  far 
as  was  possible,  his  moral  influence  upon  the 
scattered  garrison. 

This  was  the  position  of  affairs  from  the 
night  of  August  7  onwards,  for  Liege  was  then 
closely  invested  by  the  GJermans  and  all  com- 
munication between  the  forts  and  the  outer 
world  was  completely  cut  off.  They  were, 
however,  still  intact,  and,  being  well  supplied 
with  food  and  ammunition,  they  were  expected 
to  hold  out  for  a  long  time. 

At  the  same  time  the  Belgian  field  force 
which  had  taken  so  brilliant  a  part  in  the  de- 
fence, including  the  Third  Division  and  the 
Fifth  Brigade,  had  joined  the  headquarters  of 
the  Belgian  Army,  when  it  was  reviewed  by 
King  Albert,  who  congratulated  all  ranks  upon 
their  achievement.  The  Tsar  also  telegraphecf 
to  the  King  an  expression  of  his  sincere  admira- 
tion for  the  valiant  Belgian  Army  and  his  best 
wishes  for  their  success  in  this  "  heroic  struggle 
for  the  independence  of  the  country." 

In  the  circumstances  it  was  perhrps  inevitable 
that  the  General  Staff  of  the  Belgian  Army 
shoiold  have  overrated  the  tactical  value  of  the 
sviccess  which  had  been  achieved ;  and  on  the 
night  of  August  9  the  official  announcement  was 


BELGIAN  SOLDIERS. 
In  front  of  the  tree  trunk  a  pit  has  been  dug,  and  covered  over  with  branches. 

\Undervood  Sx  Undtrwccd. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAB. 


253 


INSIDE  A  BELGIAN  TRENCH. 


[Record  Press. 


made  that  "  the  offensive  movements  of  the 
enemy  had  been  completely  stopped  "  and  that 
the  French  and  Belgian  Armies  would  "  take 
offensive  action  simultaneously  in  accord- 
ance with  their  concerted  plans."  If,  at 
this  time,  offensive  action  was  really  con- 
templated by  the  Allies,  it  must  have  beeu 
through  lack  of  perspective,  because  the 
losses  suffered  by  the  three  army  corps  which  had 
assaulted  Liege,  heavy  as  they  were,  were  mere 
trifles  compared  with  the  price  which  Germany 
was  prepared  to  pay  on  the  spot  for  a  rapid 
advance  through  Belgium  upon  France. 

This  more  serious  note  in  the  struggle  had 
been  emphasized  in  the  deep  tones  of  the  big 
guns  which  had  arrived  at  last  and  began  to 
speak  to  the  Liege  forts  in  a  way  that  there 
was  no  misunderstanding.  These  heavy  siege 
guns  were  supposed  by  Messrs.  Krupp  and  their 
patrons  the  German  War  Department  to  be 
the  last  word  in  modern  artillery,  and  their 
existence  had  been  a  jealously-guarded  secret 
for  "  der  Tag."  It  must  be  admitted,  too, 
that  they  were  a  secret  worth  keeping  ;  for  the 
havoc  which  they  wrought  in  the  forts  of 
Liege  was  terrible  and  insupportable.  From 
that  day — since  the  relief  of  Liege  by  any 
adequate  force  was  not  possible — the  question 
whether  the  forts  should  surrender  or  be 
destroyed  was  only  a  question  of  the  com- 
parative endurance  of  steel  and  concrete  on 
the  one  hand  and  of  flesh  and  blood  on  the  other. 
To  the  everlasting  honour  of  the  Belgians  be 


it  recorded  that  the  indomitable  courage  of 
the  garrison  of  Liege  outlasted  the  strength  of 
the  shattered  cupolas. 

Perhaps  we  cannot  more  fitly  close  this 
blood-stained  but  glorious  chapter  in  the  history 
of  Belgiiun  better  than  by  quoting  from  the 
measured  utterances  of  leading  British  states- 
men in  the  two  Houses  of  Parliament  on 
August  27. 

In  the  House  of  Commons  the  Prime  Minister, 
Mr.  Asquith,  rising  to  propose  a  resolu- 
tion of  sympathy  and  gratitude  to  the  Belgian 
Government  and  the  gallant  Belgian  nation, 
said : — 

"  The  defence  of  Liege  (cheers)  will  always  be 
the  theme  of  one  of  the  most  inspiring  chapters 
in  the  annals  of  liberty.  The  Belgians  have  won 
for  themselves  the  immortal  glory  which  belongs 
to  a  people  who  prefer  freedom  to  ease,  to 
security,  even  to  life  itself.  We  are  proud  of 
their  alliance  and  their  friendship."     (Cheers.) 

He  was  immediately  followed  by  Mr.  Bonar 
Law,  the  Leader  of  the  Opposition,  who  said  : — • 

"  Belgium  has  deserved  well  of  the  world. 
She  has  added  another  to  the  long  list  of  great 
deeds  which  ha^ve  been  done  by  the  heroic 
patriotism  of  small  nations." 

As  further  proof  of  the  solidarity  of  the  British 
in  their  admiration  of  Belgian  pluck  and  prowess, 
Mr.  Redmond,  the  leader  of  the  Irish  Nationalist 
Party,  said  that  there  was  no  sacrifice 
which  the  Irish  would  not  willingly  make  on 
behalf  of  Belgium. 


254 


THE    TIMES    HI8T0BY    OF    THE    WAR, 


In  the  Hoiose  of  Lords  Lord  Crewe,  on  behalf 
of  the  Government,  and  Lord  Lansdowne, 
speaking  for  the  Unionist  majority,  expressed 
similar  sentiments  ;  and  the  former  uttered  a 
solemn  warning  to  Germany  with  regard  to  the 
atrocities  committed  by  her  troops  at  Liege. 
"  I  do  venture  to  declare,"  he  said,  "  that  any 
nation  that  so  conducts  itself  pays,  soon  or  late, 
and  pays  to  the  uttermost  farthing." 

With  the  British  nation  it  had  already  become 
a  serious  resolve  to  see  that  farthing  paid. 

The  story  of  Liege  leaves  us  with  a  sense 
of  having  witnessed  a  drama  complete  in 
its  theme  and  glorious  in  its  motif.  And  the 
glamour  of  it  seemed  to  ennoble  every  contem- 
porary reference  to  its  circumstances.  At 
Dublin,  on  September  25,  1914,  the  British 
Prime  Minister,  Mr.  Asquith,  expressed  in 
measured  words  no  more  than  the  heart-feeling 
of  every  man  in  his  vast  audience  when  he  said 
that  the  indomitable  resistance  of  the  Belgians 
"  proved  to  the  world  that  ideas  which  cannot  be 
weighed  or  measured  by  any  material  calculus 
can  still  inspire  and  dominate  mankind." 
These  are  not  the  words  in  which  the  man  in  the 
street  would  have  clothed  the  thought.  He 
would  have  been  content  to  say  : — "  Belgium  is 
in  the  right  and,  by  God,  we'll  see  her  through  !  " 
There  are  times  when  an  expletive  becomes 
dignified  as  the  very  spirit  of  a  sentence ;    and  ■ 


this  was  one  of  them.  The  words  italicized  in 
the  supposititious  sentence  above,  common  as  it 
may  seem,  were  the  national  British  expression 
of  the  "  ideas  "  which  still  dominate  mankind, 
in  spite  of  Kaisers.  Belgium  was  "  right " 
and  "  by  God "  we  would  see  her  through. 
That  was  the  idea. 

Mr.  Asquith  rose  to  the  level  of  that  idea.  So 
did  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  the  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer  ;  so  did  Mr.  Churchill,  First  Lord  of  the 
Admiralty ;  so  did  all  the  other  Ministers  in  their 
degrees  and  according  to  their  abilities.  So  did 
the  leaders  of  the  Opposition.  So  did  the  Irish 
Nationalists  and  the  Ulstermen,  lately  so  ready 
to  fly  at  one  another's  throats.  So  did  the 
Boers  and  the  British,  not  long  ago  deadly 
foes  and  until  then  mostly  suspicious  of  each 
other's  motives.  So  did  Canada  and  Australia 
and  New  Zealand.  So  did  all  the  diverse  races 
with  jarring  creeds  which  compose  Britain's 
most  magnificent  heritage,  the  loyal  Indian 
Empire.  So  did  all  our  Crown  colonies.  So  did 
all  our  Allies  and  our  friends  in  other  lands. 

Nor  did  Mr.  Asquith  overstate  the  case  when 
he  said  that  by  establishing  this  idea  Belgium 
had  done  more  than  change  the  whole  face  of 
the  Grerman  campaign.  Even  the  tremendous 
pohtical  results  of  the  war  were  not  so  important 
as  this  new  unity  of  mankind  in  defence  of  the 
Right.     It  is  not  a  coincidence  that  throughout 


AN  11-in.  GERMAN  MORTAR. 
This  is  the  barrel  section  on  a  special  carriage  for  transport. 


lRfc<»rd  Prtss- 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


255 


BELGIAN  SOLDIERS  FIRING  AT  A  PASSING  AEROPLANE. 


[  Topical. 


Britain  the  war  period  was  marked  by  an 
amazing  absence  of  crime.  There  may  seem 
to  be  no  direct  antagonism  between  a  scheme  of 
world-war  hatched  at  Potsdam  and  a  burglary 
planned  in  Whitechapel.  But  many  a  burglar, 
moved  to  honest  indignation  by  the  German 
outrage,  enlisted  as  a  soldier  or  found  some 
other  way  to  declare  himself  on  the  side  of  the 
Right ;  and  thus  many  police  were  set  free  to 
protect  the  nation's  interests,  instead  of  watching 
the  criminals. 

And  what  happened  in  Britain  occurred  in 
varying  degress  throughout  the  civilized  world. 
Men  became  better.  This  is  what  Belgium  did 
for  the  world  ;  and  it  was  a  service  for  which 
mankind  can  never  sufficiently  thank  her. 
The  crisis  was  one  towards  which  the  civilized 
world  had  been  inevitably  advancing  for  many 
j^ears ;  and  to  the  historian  of  the  distant 
future  the  era  of  1914  will  still  stand  out  as  a 
great  landmark,  for  a  companion  to  which  his 
eye  may  even  travel  down  the  long  perspective 
Df  centuries  to  that  time  when  Christ  preached 
"  peace  on  earth  and  goodwill  towards  men  " — 
the  idea  which,  to  repeat  Mr.  Asquith's  phrase, 
"  still  dominates  mankind."  That  in  most 
spheres  of  human  activity  it  has  seemed  little 
more  than  an  "  idea,"  as  far  removed  from 
daily  practice  in  individual  as  in  international 
life,  has  been  due  to  the  stress  of  the  persistent 


struggle  for  existence.  The  "  idea "  was  in 
every  heart ;  but  the  pressure  of  necessity 
controlled  every  brain,  and  the  brain  was, 
almost  always,  the  working  partner. 

And  out  of  the  struggle  for  existence  en- 
gineered by  the  brain  arose  the  armed  might 
of  the  German  Empire,  a  gigantic  organism 
deliberately  constructed  in  every  detail  upon 
theories  of  hard  science.  Christ's  "  idea " 
had  no  place  in  this ;  although  even  in 
German  dreams  it  asserted  itself  as  the  final 
ambition — a  world-peace  of  goodwill  and 
content  under  the  sheltering  wings  of  the 
Prussian  eagle. 

Thus  the  real  question  at  issue  was  whether 
or  not  Christ's  teaching  should  definitely  be 
shelved  until  Germany,  after  subduing  the 
world,  had  time  to  attend  to  it.  It  would 
have  been  difficult,  and  rightly  so,  to  per- 
suade the  British  nation  that  so  plain  an 
issue  was  involved  in  the  quarrel  between 
Servia  and  Austria,  or  between  Austria  and 
Russia,  or  Germany  and  Russia,  or  even  Ger- 
many and  France.  Treaty  obligations  might 
have  compelled  the  British  Government  to 
declare  war  against  Germany  under  conditions 
which  did  not  apparently  involve  this  issue  ; 
for  treaties  are  entangling  things  which  some- 
times drag  a  nation  in  the  direction  whither  it 
hould  not  go. 


"> 


256 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR, 


Whether  we  should  necessarily  have  been 
embroiled  in  a  war  between  Germany  and  France 
would  have  depended  upon  circiimstances  ;  and 

f  the  Kaiser  had  realized  that  the  British  Empire 
would  go  headlong  into  war  for  the  "  idea  "  of 
which  Mr.  Asquith  spoke  at  Dublin,  his  diplo- 
mats might  have  been  adroit  enough  to  shift  the 
rupttu-e  with  France  on  to  groixnd  where  the 

'  idea  "  had  no  place.  But  the  fact  was  that 
the  German  mind,  having  itself  shelved  the 
"  idea  " — that  the  Right  miist  prevail  by  the  wil 
of  God — did  not  conceive  that  it  could  still  be 
the  mainspring  of  British  poUcy,  nay,  more,  that 
it  should,  as  Mr.  Asqmth  said  at  Dublin,  "  still 
dominate  mankind."  So  the  German,  claiming 
to  be  a  superman,  did  not  trouble  himself  to  be 
adroit  in  diplomacy.  "  Finesse  and  scruples," 
he  said — in  action,  if  not  in  words — "  for  weaker 
folk  ;  for  me  the  mailed  fist  and  the  big  batta- 
lions— and  the  big  guns."  So  the  German  deli- 
berately embarked  upon  his  course  of  war  by 
committing  a  wrong — ^by  outraging  the  neutra- 
lity of  a  httle  State  which  he  had  pledged  his 
honour  to  protect.  His  lofty  excuse  to  God  and 
his  own  conscience  was  that  he  would  make  it  all 
right  afterwards.  "  I  shall  defy  God  now,"  he 
said,  "  in  order  to  win  this  war  easily  by  a  dis- 
honourable trick,  and  then,  when  I  have  won  the 
war  and  all  Eiirope  is  at  my  feet,  I  shall  con- 
descend to  make  amends  to  poor  little  Belgium 
who  will  then  be  my  grateful  slave."  From 
this  mad  dream  he  had  a  rude  awakening  at 
Liege. 

And  in  describing  the  German's  dream  of 
treachery  and  conquest  as  "  mad,"  we  are  not 
going  beyond  the  facts  of  the  case.  "  Quem 
Deus  vult  perdere  prius  dementat  " — "  Whom 
God  decides  to  ruin  He  first  makes  mad  " — 
is  the  ancient  Christian  form  of  a  stUl  more 
ancient  classic  proverb,  fovmded — like  ovir  own 
simple  old  proverb,  "  Pride  goeth  before  a  fall  " 
— upon  the  immemorial  theme  of  the  oldest 
Greek  tragedies  in  which  Nemesis  always  waited 
grimly    upon  the    insolence  (t5/3pts)     of    trivun- 


phant  tyrants.  This  was  the  ailment  of  the 
Grerman.  He  was  too  swelled  with  pride  in  the 
Teuton  "  thoroughness "  of  his  own  prepara 
tions  for  the  conquest  of  the  world  in  peace  and 
war  to  be  able  to  give  way  to  the  "  rights  "  of 
Uttle  peoples.  He  would  look  into  the  matter 
after  he  had  finished  his  conquest.  Belgium  and 
Britain — and  God — must  wait  until  then 
These  may  not  be  the  exact  words  which  the 
German  Government  used,  but  they  convey 
no  exaggeration  in  fact  of  the  attitude  which 
that  Government  adopted.  It  had  quite 
forgotten  the  idea  which  still  inspires  and 
dominates  mankind — the  idea  th?,t  in  defending 
the  Right  we  fight  on  the  side  of  God. 

Thus  the  German,  who  deliberately  omitted 
the  Right  from  his  scheme  of  world-conquest, 
unconsciously  did  greater  service  for  the  Right 
than  any  philanthropist  could  have  conceived 
in  his  wUdest  dreams. 

"It  is  my  Imperial  and  Royal  intention," 
said  the  Kaiser  in  effect  on  August  3,  1914, 
"  to  give  consideration  to  the  wishes  of  God 
with  regard  to  Belgium  when  I  shall  have 
executed  my  Imperial  and  Royal  will  with 
regard  to  France  and  the  pestilent  and  con- 
temptible English."  As  a  foreigner  his  Imperial 
and  Royal  Majesty  was  not  to  be  blamed  for 
failing  to  observe  that,  besides  the  English, 
there  were  Scotch,  Irish.  Welsh,  Canadian, 
Australian,  South  African,  Indian,  and  many 
other  contingents  concerned  in  the  offence  of 
Zsse  majeste  which  he  so  much  resented.  Even 
those  natives  in  South  Africa  who  are  wisely 
prohibited  from  carrying  arms  had  petitioned 
the  Government  that  they  might  be  allowed  to 
"  throw  a  few  stones  "  at  the  Gernxans  ! 

The  Kaiser  did  not  dream  of  the  magnificent 
work  which  he  was  doing  ;  how  he  was  welding 
the  Empire  upon  which  the  sim.  never  sets 
into  a  single  active  organism  for  the  good  of 
the  world  and  to  the  glory  of  God.  He  was 
thinking  only  of  Germany  as  typified  in  its 
Supreme  War  Lord,   himself. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE    GERMAN    ADVANCE    TO 

BRUSSELS. 


Belgium's  Real  Ambitions — Social  Reform — The  Neglect  of  Militarism — Preparations 
Come  too  Late — Hopes  of  Foreign  Assistance — The  Peasant  Guards — German  Cavalry 
Advance — First  Skirmishes — The  Battle  of  Haelen — Eghezee — French  Troops  in  Bel- 
gium— The  German  Advance  in  Earnest — Belgian  Retreat  on  Antwerp — Belgian  Staff 
Explanation — The  Position  in  Brussels — Refugees — Growing  Public  Alarm — Government 
Retires  to  Antwerp — False  Hopes  of  Victory — M.  Max — The  German  Entry  into  Brussels. 


THE  position  of  Belgium  in  the  days 
immediately  following  the  outbreak 
of  the  war  was  one  of  obvious  paril. 
The  forts  of  Liege  controlled  the 
main  roads  from  Germany  to  the  coast,  but  Liege 
could  not  hope  to  hold  out  against  a  resolute 
German  attack  for  more  than  a  few  days.  Once 
Liege  fell,  there  were  no  effective  fortress 
defences  between  the  German  frontier  and  Ant- 
werp. Brussels  was  an  open  city,  and  the  battles 
for  its  possession  must  be  fought,  not  in  its 
suburbs,  but  farther  afield,  in  the  neighbouring 
districts  of  Aerechot,  Diest,  Louvain,  and 
Wavre.  If  Germany  made  a  sustained  attempt 
to  conquer  Belgium,  it  was  evident  that  no 
unaided  effort  of  the  Belgians  could  save  it. 
The  hope  of  the  nation  lay  in  two  possibilities, 
the  arrival  of  immediate  aid  from  England 
and  France,  or  the  chance  that  the  German 
Armies  would  advance,  not  to  the  coast, 
but  straight  to  Paris.  The  road  to  Paris  lay 
to  the  wjst.  Hence,  even  although  day  by  day 
the  news  from  the  front  foreshadowed  the  early 
capture  of  Liege,  the  people  of  Northern 
Belgium  hoped  against  hops  that  their  homes, 
at  least,  would  escape  the  horrors  of  foreign 
occupation. 

The  coimtry  on  the  Franco -Belgian  frontier 
between  the  Lys  and  the  Yser  and  the  valley  of 
the  Somme  below  Amiens  could  be  flooded, 
from  which  it  seemed  to  follow  that  the  right  of 


the  main  German  advance  on  Paris  would  be 
limited  by  the  line  Liege-Brussels-Lille- Amiens. 
The  Germans  were  very  unlikely  to  make  con- 
siderable detachments  until  after  their  main 
object — the  rout  of  the  hostile  field  armies — had 
been  attained.  Hence  it  was  likely  that  the  whole 
country  west  and  north  of  the  line  indicated 
would  escape  effective  occupation  until  after  the 
German  advance  on  Paris  had  succeeded  or 
failed. 

To  the  people  of  Belgium  war  came  un- 
desired  and  unsought.  They  had  nothing  to 
gain  by  it  and  everything  to  lose.  Social  re- 
form, not  militarism,  had  been  their  aim.  The 
Army,  and  all  that  had  to  do  with  the  Army, 
was  for  long  regarded  with  a  feeling  of  in- 
difference not  untouched  with  contempt.  There 
was  no  strong  military  caste,  as  in  France  and 
Germany.  Trusting  to  the  pledged  word  of 
Europe,  guaranteeing  Belgian  independence 
and  permanent  neutrality,  the  Belgian  Parlia- 
ment had  until  1912  neglected  adequate  prepara  ■ 
tions  for  national  defence.  Compulsory  service 
was  only  compulsory  for  the  poor  or  those  with- 
out influence  ;  the  time  of  training  was  far  too 
short.  Service  in  the  ranks  was  regarded  as  a 
task  to  be  avoided  whenever  opportunity  offered. 
While  France  and  Germany  endured  the  heaviest 
burdens  to  maintain  their  fighting  strength, 
Belgium  devoted  herself  to  coromercial  and  in- 
dustrial progress. 


257 


^ 


258 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    TliE     WAR. 


NAMUR,  FROM  THE  MEUSE,  BEFORE  BOMBARDMENT. 
Showing  the  Citadel  Hotel  and  Fortifications. 


Social  problems,  arising  out  of  the  density  of 
the  population  and  the  comparative  poverty  of 
a  large  number  of  the  people,  were  the  main 
subjects  of  public  concern.  Industry  was  care- 
fully encouraged.  Cooperative  experiments  were 
initiated,  and  the  standard  of  well-being  of 
the  people  was  appreciably  raised.  The  Bel- 
gians were  able  to  boast — with  a  large  degree  of 
truth — ^that  their  country  afforded  the  maxi- 
mum of  comfort  and  the  minimum  of  expense 
for  those  living  in  it  of  any  part  of  Western 
Europe.  Belgian  manufactures  steadily  gained 
reputation.  The  products  of  the  Cockerill 
Ironworks  at  Liege,  for  example,  competed 
successfully  with  those  of  Germany,  England, 
and  America.  Belgium  became  a  favourite 
centre  for  thq  erection  of  factories,  many 
German  and  British  firms  maintaining  works 
on  the  various  river  banks.  Antwerp  grew  to 
be  one  of  the  largest  and  best-equipped  shipping 
ports  in  Europe.  Belgian  finance  was  making 
itself  more  and  more  felt  in  certain  specialized 
fields.  The  Belgians  were  markedly  active  in 
the  newer  markets  of  the  world.  In  China  and 
in  Central  Africa,  in  South  America  and  in 
Manchuria,  their  representatives  were  found 
seeking  concessions,  laying  railways,  promoting 
electrical  schemes,  and  acquiring  power. 

Belgium,  with  its  ideal  geographical  position 


and  its  widespread  prosperity,  aroused  the  envy 
and  desire  of  its  ambitious  and  powerful  neigh- 
bour to  the  south-east.  Germany  wanted  an 
outlet  to  the  sea — Antwerp  and  Zeebrugge 
would  afford  it.  Germany  wanted  an  open  road 
to  the  heart  of  France — the  road  lay  right 
through  Southern  Belgium.  It  was  the  unhappy 
fortune  of  this  Uttle  kingdom  to  be  the  Naboth's 
Vineyard  of  Europe. 

It  is  true  that  since  1912,  alarmed  bj'^  the 
growing  German  menace,  sustained  efforts  had 
been  made  to  remedy  the  backward  defences  of 
the  country  and  to  recreate  the  Army.  But  a 
great  national  army  cannot  be  created  in  less 
than  two  years.  Thus  Belgium  found  herself 
at  the  outbreak  of  the  war  laqking  trained 
fighting  men,  lacking  in  equipment,  lacking  in 
officers,  and  lacking  in  experience.  What  was 
not  lacking,  as  events  soon  proved,  was  bold- 
ness, courage,  and  eagerness  to  meet  the  foe. 

Had  the  Belgians  been  given  time,  they  might 
have  raised  and  trained  within  a  few  months  a 
force  of  half  a  million  men  that  could  have  at 
least  held  up  the  Germans  along  prepared  lines 
of  fortified  places  imtil  France  and  England 
could  come  to  their  aid.  But  time  was  the 
one  thing  denied  Belgium.  Her  borders  ran, 
from  Vise  to  Luxemburg,  next  to  those 
of    Germany.     The     German    railways    from 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


259 


Diisseldorf,  Cologne,  and  Coblentz  could  bring 
strong  armies  into  Belgian  territory  in  a  few 
hours,  and  line  after  line  of  long  sidings  were 
already  prepared  at  each  frontier  station  from 
which  the  troop  trains  could  disgorge  their 
men  in  the  shortest  possible  time.  The  mili- 
tary headquarters  at  Aix-la-Chapelle  were 
practically  within  sight  of  Belgian  soil.  Germany 
had  made  all  her  preparations  to  strike  at 
Belgium  suddenly  and  overwhelmingly.  Even 
before  war  was  declared  German  troops  crossed 
the  border,  Allowing  for  the  necessary  troops 
for  the  fortresses  of  Namur  and  Antwerp, 
Belgiixm  could  put  on  the  fighting  line  after 
the  fall  of  Liege  only  a  Field  Army  of  about 
110,000  men  to  guard  the  road  to  Brussels 
and  the  north.  Against  these  the  Germans 
could  easily  bring  a  quarter  of  a  million 
men  and  as  many  more  as  might  be 
necessary. 

The  Belgians  did  not,  perhaps,  anticipate 
having  to  conduct  their  own  defence  for  more 
than  a  few  days  at  the  outside.  They  believed 
that  the  British  and  the  French  would  be  able 
to  give  them  strong  help  at  once.  Day  after 
day,  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  crowds  of 
people  stood  on  the  front  at  Ostend,  many  of 
them  with  powerful  glasses,  searching  the 
horizon  for  the  first  signs  of  the  coming  of  the 
British  Relief  Expedition.  Every  Englishman 
throughout  the  country  was  constantly  asked  : 
"  When  will  your  troops  arrive  ?  "  When 
news  came  to  hand  that  a  British  Expeditionary 
Force  had  left  England,  Brussels  papers  stated 
that  it  was  landing  at  Zeebrugge  and  Ostend, 
and  would  soon  be  fighting  on  the  Meuse.  On 
more  than  one  occasion  crowds  hurried  to  the 
Gare  du  Nord  at  Brussels  on  the  nimour  that 
the  British  had  come,  prepared  to  give  them  a 
great  welcome. 

The  Belgians  were  equally  confident  of 
French  assistance.  They  assumed  that  French 
armies  assembled  between  Namur  and  Verdun 
would  move  eastwards  through  Belgian  Luxem- 
burg and  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Luxemburg. 
Belgian  hopes  of  the  cooperation  of  the  French 
were  encouraged  by  the  appearance  of  French 
Staff  Officers  in  Brussels  and  of  French  cavalry 
in  apparent  strength  from  Longwy  northwards 
to  Gembloux.  Reports  were  received  that  the 
French  were  advancing  in  force  eastwards  from 
Namur  along  the  banks  of  the  Meuse  towards 
Liege.  It  was  known  that  they  were  strongly 
holding  the  strategic  triangular  position  where 
the  Sambre  and  the  Meuse  meet  close  to  Namur. 
The  Belgian  people,  as  has  been  said,  knew 
that  their  Army  was  in  itself  insufficient  to 
offer  any  permanent  resistance  to  a  German 


attack.  This,  however,  did  not  check  thd 
resolution  of  the  people  to  fight  to  the  last. 
A  wave  of  patriotism  swept  over  the  nation 
that  wiped  away  all  local  and  party  differences. 
The  King  voiced  the  cry  "  Aux  armes !"  and 
led  the  way  to  the  trenches.  He  became  in 
an  hour  the  popular  idol,  and  men  who  had 
persistently  sought  his  overthrow  admitted 
gladly  :  "  If  we  make  Belgium  a  republic,  we  will 
have  Albert  as  our  first  President."  The 
Socialists,  a  powerful  and  numerous  group,  who 
in  the  past  had  led  the  cause  of  pacifism  and 
opposed  Army  reform,  were  now  among  the  first 
to  volunteer  for  war.  The  Prime  Minister 
invited  the  cooperation  of  all  parties.  M. 
Vandervelde,  the  Labour  leader,  was  appointed 
a  Minister  of  State  and  voiced  the  sentiments  of 
his  party  when  he  declared  that  the  workers 
would  defend  their  country  when  attacked  with 


A   BELGIAN  LOOK-OUT  MAN. 

[Daily  Mirror. 


260 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


GERMAN    FIELD    KITCHEN    CAPTURED    AND    USED    BY    THE    BELGIANS. 

[Sport  and  General. 


the  same  ardour  with  which  they  had  defended 
their  liberties  in  the  past.  Le  Peuple,  the  organ 
of  the  Labour  Party,  called  upon  the  workers  to 
arm  :  "  Why  do  we,"  it  asked,  "  as  irreconcilable 
anti-militarists,  cry  '  Bravo  ! '  from  the  bottom  of 
our  hearts  to  all  those  who  offer  themselves  for 
the  defence  of  the  country  ?  Because  it 
is  not  only  necessary  to  protect  the  hearths 
and  homes,  the  women  and  the  children, 
but  it  is  also  necessary  to  protect  at  the 
price  of  our  blood  the  heritage  of  our  ancient 
freedom. 

"  Go,  then,  sons  of  the  workers,  and  regifter 
your  names  as  recruits.  We  will  rather  die  for 
the  idea  of  progress  and  solidarity  of  humanity 
than  live  under  a  regime,  whose  brutal  force  and 
savage  violence  have  wiped  out  right." 

While  the  German  troops  were  flinging  them- 
selves against  Liege,  the  Belgians  were  preparing 
for  a  stubborn  national  defence.  The  Army 
was  already  at  its  post,  tho  reserves  had  been 
called  up,  the  Civil  Guaid  were  being  armed,  and 
the  towns  and  villages  south  of  Brussels  from 
Hasselt  to  Gembloux  and  Namur  were  held  in 
force.  The  peasants  in  many  villages  gsthered 
together.  They  brought  out  their  guns — 
ancient  fowling-pieces,  rook  rifles,  sporting 
guns,  anything  they  had.  Those  who  had  no 
guns  could  at  least  secure  knives.     They  banded 


themselves  together  and  formed  local  ^ards. 
No  stranger  could  pass  without  satisfying  them 
concerning  his  business.  "  As  showing  how  all 
the  roads  leading  to  the  fiont  are  guarded," 
wrote  one  correspondent  who  attempted  to 
reach  the  front  at  this  time,  "  I  mf  y  say  that  I 
was  stopped  dviring  a  journey  of  70  kiloirietres 
no  fewer  than  52  times  by  police,  civil  guards, 
soldiers,  and,  last  but  not  least,  by  peasants. 
These  latter  are  armed  with  the  most  varied 
collection  of  guns,  far  more  fea-'ful  and  wonder- 
ful than  any  I  have  seen  outside  of  a  museum. 
Many  carry  in  addition  bayonets  which  certainly 
must  have  been  picked  up  on  the  field  of  Water- 
loo. They  shout  in  bad  French  and  Flemish 
for  any  innocent  voyager  to  stop,  and  swarm 
round  your  car  with  the  firm  conviction  that  you 
are  a  spy.  Passports  signed  by  the  highest 
military  and  civil  authorities  in  the  country  are 
often  of  no  avail  whatever." 

A  spy  fever  spread  over  the  country,  and 
there  was  good  cause  for  it.  People  who  had 
lived  in  different  parts  for  years  a3  trusted  neigh- 
bours suddenly  disappeared,  only  to  return  later 
as  guides  for  advance  parties  of  the  German 
Army.  Others  were  discovered  attempting  to 
injure  telegraphs  and  railwayr  or  endeavouring, 
by  carrier  pigeons  and  other  means,  to  keep  up 
communication    with    the    Germans     on    the 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


261 


frontier.  Some  were  disguised  as  monks  or 
nuns,  some  as  parish  priests,  some  con- 
trolled secret  wireless  apparatus.  The  German 
espionage  department  proved  its  efficiency 
here  as  elsewhere  in  the  early  days  of  the 
war. 

The  uprising  of  the  peasants,  admirable  as  it 
was  as  a  revelation  of  national  spirit,  was  use- 
less, if  not  worse  than  useless,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  real  fighting  strength.  Chance  groups 
of  ill-armed  and  untrained  civilians  can  present 
no  eflective  resistance  to  regular  troops.  The 
Belgian  peasants  caught  a  certain  number  of 
isolated  Uhlans,  thus  giving  an  excuse  for 
subsequent  German  severity  against  the 
people  at  large.  Soon  their  own  authorities 
asked  them  to  desist.  The  German  com- 
manders let  it  be  known  that  they  would 
show  no  mercy  to  civilians  who  took  up  arms, 
but  would  treat  them  and  the  districts  from 
which  they  operated  with  the  utmost  rigour. 
For  civilians  generally  there  was  to  be  one 
penalty  for  resistance — death.  The  places 
where  they  fought  were  to  be  burned  to  the 
ground.  Even  the  civil  guards,  uniformed 
though  they  were,  were  to  be  treated  as  civilians 
and  shot  at  once  when  caught  with  arms  in  their 
hands. 


The  Belgian  authorities  posted  notices  through- 
out the  country  warning  civihans  that  they 
must  not  resist  German  troops,  but  must  leave 
military  measures  to  the  Army.  The  peasant 
uprising  did  not  delay  the  main  advance  of  the 
German  Army  for  an  hour.  It  ended  almost  as 
quickly  as  it  began,  but  not  before  a  large  num- 
ber of  men  and  boys  of  all  ages  thiouglTout 
Brabant,  Namur,  Liege,  and  Belgian  Luxem- 
btirg  had  been  sacrificed.  It  served  to  empha- 
size the  lesson  that  resistance  to  a  powerful 
enemy  must  be  organized  in  advance.  The 
man  who  refuses  to  s^rve  his  country  in 
times  of  peace  by  preparing  for  war  may 
find,  when  real  national  danger  comes,  that 
his  only  occupation  must  be  to  sit  down  and 
do  nothing  because  he  is^from  a  military  point 
of  view — good  for  nothing. 

The  little  Belgian  Army  used  the  time  at 
its  disposal  during  the  German  delay  in  front 
of  Liege  to  the  best  advantage.  The  whole 
southern  countryside  was  prepared  for  resist- 
ance. Roadways  were  blown  up  with  dyna- 
mite sticks.  Cunning  traps  were  laid  across 
the  roads  for  the  Uhlans,  low  and  almost 
invisible  barriers  of  barbed  wire  being  arranged 
in  two  parts  in  such  a  way  that  ordinary  traffic 
could  pass  in  safety  with  care  but  any  attempt 


'^i  ^^j^^K/^^^f^^^^m 

■HHisi?\\^^/y    ,      T«ii 

r. 

;^^P^pi^f 

ijB'^.^w>          ^M!9 

]m        m 

4b 

*i 

^P» 

«p  ^9 

^^      J^^^^l 

■■i 

BELGIAN    SOLDIERS    HAVING    THEIR    MIDDAY    MEAL. 

iUnderwood  and  Underwood, 


262 


THE    TIMES    Rl STORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


to  rush  by  would  inevitably  bring  horses  and 
riders  to  the  ground.  The  country  southward 
of  Louvain  lent  itself  to  guerilla  warfare, 
being  well  wooded  and  suitable  for  the  conceal- 
ment of  small  pariiies  of  troops. 

The  sustained  resistance  of  General  Leman 
and  his  garrison  at  Liege,  described  in  the 
previous  chapter,  gave  the  main  Belgian  Army 
a  few  days  of  grace.  Liege  was  the  principal 
railway  centre  for  the  lines  southwards,  the 
main  roads  ran  through  there,  and  the  important 
bridges  across  the  Meuse  lay  under  the  reach 
of  its  guns.  When  the  Belgian  troops  blew 
up  the  bridge  at  Vise  in  the  opening  hours  of 
the  war,  the  Germans  at  once  attempted  to 
throw  pontoon  bridges  across  the  river.  Their 
first  efforts  were  continuously  unsuccessful. 
At  Vis6  itself  they  built  no  fewer  than  20  pon- 
toon bridges,  it  is  reported,  each  one  being 
immediately  destroyed  by  the  guns  of  the 
Liege  forts.  One  bridge  was,  however,  erected 
within  200  yards  of  the  Dutch  frontier  and 
considerable  forces  were  poured  in  over  it. 

While  the  Germans  were  waiting  around 
Li6ge  for  the  arrival  of  their  large  siege  guns 


BELGIAN  SOLDIERS   FIRING   FROM 

COVER..  [Underwood  6-  Underwood. 


which  were  to  destroy  the  forts,  a  strong 
force — no  fewer  than  five  army  corps — ^was 
brought  into  the  region  to  the  south  of  the 
river.  A  cavalry  screen  was  thrown  across 
the  river  and  proceeded  to  overrun  the  coxmtry- 
side.  Following  the  plan  that  had  proved  so 
successful  in  the  Franco -Prussian  War,  little 
bands  of  Uhlans,  Hussars,  and  Chiirassiers 
were  sent  out  throughout  the  north.  Many  of 
these  were  apparently  ill -equipped  for  their 
task.  They  had  no  proper  supply  of  maps, 
and  they  did  not  seem  to  have  any  definite 
plan  except  to  move  ahead  until  they  got  in 
touch  with  the  Belgians.  They  had  very  little 
food.  This  was  probably  dehberately  arranged 
in  order  to  make  them  live  on  the  coimtry. 
Many  of  them  were  captured  and  many  were 
killed.  It  is  possible  that  the  dispatch  of  these 
unsupported  and  isolated  little  bands  was 
purposely  devised,  not  alone  to  keep  in  com- 
plete touch  with  the  enemy,  but  also  to  give 
the  Belgians  a  false  idea  of  the  German  prepara- 
tions. It  is  a  well-known  and  admitted 
principle  of  Grerman  military  strategy  to  make 
a  show  of  weakness  until  preparations  are 
completed  which  enable  an  army  to  strike 
with  its  full  strength.  And  if  the  German 
cavalry  were  defeated  at  some  places  they 
drove  terror    home  in  others. 

Soon  the  reputation  of  the  Uhlans  spread 
through  hxmdreds  of  villages,  as  that  of  men  who 
spared  neither  themselves  nor  their  foes,  who 
rode  recklessly  against  any  enemy  in  sight,  who 
died  with  a  laugh  when  beaten,  and  who  slew 
man  and  boy,  ruined  women  and  burned 
homes  without  compunction  and  without 
mercy  wherever  they  went.  It  is  not  necessary 
at  this  point  to  .inquire  how  far  this  reputation 
was  deserved,  or  how  far  the  advancing  German 
cavalry  were  actually  guilty  of  the  charges  soon 
to  be  laid  against  them.  It  is  clear,  however, 
that  their  instructions  were  not  only  to  find 
out  what  forces  were  in  front  of  them  and 
what  serious  resistance  would  have  to  be 
faced,  but  also  to  strike  fear  into  the  hearts  of 
the  people. 

The  countryside  between  Li^ge  and  Louvain 
presented  a  sombre  picture  in  those  early  days 
of  the  war.  The  fields  were  ripe  for  harvest, 
but  there  were  no  men  to  spare  to  gather  the 
crops  of  golden  corn,  and  the  women  and 
children  had  in  many  cases  fled  northwards. 
In  the  villages  some  houses  had  been  destroyed 
by  the  Belgians  themselves  lest  they  should 
afford  prv  lection  for  the  enemy,  while  others 
had  been  burned  down  by  advancing  Germans. 
Every  road  was  barricaded,  and  behind  the 
lines   of   barrels   and   bushes   and  the  earthen 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


263 


GERMAN  SHELLS  BURSTING  IN  A  FIELD  NEAR  THE  BELGIAN   POSITION  WHERE 

INFANTRY  WERE   CONCEALED.  [Daily  Mirror. 


embankments  little  companies  of  soldiers  and 
civil  guards  lay  waiting.  Many  of  these  men 
were  reservists  who  had  been  called  up  almost 
without  notice — fathers  of  families  and  respon- 
sible citizens  whose  hearts  were  still  full  of 
anxiety  for  their  families  and  their  affairs. 
Already  they  showed,  however,  abundant  signs 
that  the  ancient  courage  of  the  men  of  Flanders 
could  still  be  counted  upon.  There  was  a  gay 
grinxness  among  them  that  betrayed  the  bom 
fighting  man.  Their  discipline  was  lax,  their 
military  knowledge  was  in  many  cases  trivial, 
and  they  were  ill -prepared  for  the  physical 
and  material  strain  of  day-and-night  work 
against  an  active  foe  in  the  open.  But  none 
eould  deny  their  courage  or  their  zeal.  The 
pity  of  it  was  that  men  so  brave  and  so  fine 
should  not  have  been  more  fully  prepared 
for  the  tremendous  task  ahead. 

Many  regiments  started  out  accompanied 
by  priests,  who  exhorted  the  soldiers  to  fight 
for  their  country  and  their  faith.  The 
wives  and  friends  of  the  soldiers  visited  them  in 
the  very  front  line  of  trenches,  bringing  them 
food  and  cigarettes.  These  men  were  fighting, 
many  of  them  just  by  their  homes,  almost 
within  sight  of  their  own  families.  They  did  not 
hesitate,  however,  to  sacrifice  everything  in  front 
of  them  that  could  help  the  enemy.  The  rail- 
ways were  torn  up,  bridges  were  blown  into  the 


air  whenever  possible,  and  tunnels  were  blocked 
by  derailing  locomotives  and  then  sending  others 
crashing  into  them,  forming  one  great  tangled 
and  mixed  mass.  The  Belgians  laid  part  of  the 
country  to  waste — the  Germans,  as  they 
advanced,  completed  the  work. 

The  Belgians  at  first  made  some  use  of  aero- 
planes for  reconnoitring  purposes.  But  their 
own  peasants  and  volim.teers  fired  on  every  aero- 
plane they  saw,  and  there  is  only  too  much 
reason  to  believe  that  they  brought  down  several 
Belgian  aeroplanes  in  that  way.  Orders  were 
issued  when  too  late  to  stop  this  indiscriminate 
shooting.  Gradually,  as  the  German  armoured 
Taube  aeroplanes  came  into  action,  less  and  less 
was  heard  of  the  Belgian  aircraft,  and  before  the 
fall  of  Brussels  the  German  aeroplanes  appa- 
rently held  supremacy  of  the  air. 

At  the  end  of  the  first  week  the  Belgian  mili- 
tary authorities  expressed  considerable  satisfac- 
tion with  the  state  of  affairs.  Liege  was  still 
holding  out  and  was  engaging  the  attention  of 
three  German  Army  Corps.  In  numerous  minor 
engagements  the  Belgian  troops  had  proved  their 
mettle.  The  Belgian  cavalry  in  particular  had 
distinguished  themselves  by  the  most  reckless 
bravery.  '  Tout  est  calme.  Tout  va  bien  " 
was  the  phrase  on  many  lips.  Reports  were 
even  circulated  that  the  Germans  were  con- 
templating  retirement   and   were    entrenching 


i. 


264 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


THE  LAST   STAND   MADE   BY   THE   BELGIANS   AT  LOUVAIN. 


[Record  Press. 


themselves  on  the  banks  of  the  river  Ourthe' 
and  in  Luxemburg  to  protect  their  retreat. 

The  reahty  was  very  different.  The  Germans 
had  at  last  succeeded  in  erecting  a  bridge  at 
Lixhe  over  which  their  cavalry  and  heavy  artil- 
lery could  be  conveyed.  A  considerable  force  of 
cavalry  had  already  crossed  the  river,  and  this 
made  a  preliminary  advance  while  the  main  force 
took  up  its  position. 

On  Sunday,  August  9,  two  divisions  of  German 
cavalry,  numbering  about  7,000  sabres,  and 
supported  by  infantry,  moved  upwards  towards 
the  Hesbaye.  The  people  of  Tongres  were  sur- 
prised that  day  to  find  a  detachment  of  the 
enemy  riding  down  their  main  street.  There 
was  a  sudden  panic,  and  people  hastily  closed 
and  barred  their  windows  and  locked  their  doors, 
leaving  the  roadways  deserted.  The  cavalry  rode 
to  the  town  hall,  and  there  ordered  the  mayor 
to  produce  his  money  chest  and  to  lower  the 
Belgian  flag  hanging  out  of  the  window.  The 
mayor  refused  to  lower  the  flag,  whereupon  the 
Germans  lowered  it  for  him.  They  appro- 
priated the  town's  money  and  seized  10,000 
francs  at  the  post  office.  Then  they  ordered 
food,  for  which  they  paid,  and  had  a  meal  in  the 
market  place. 

Cavalry  moved  forward  along  different  roads 
and  joined  issue  with  the  Belgian  troops  all 
along  the  line  at  St.  Trend,  Tirlemont,  Osmael, 
Guxenhoven,  and  at  smaller  places.  The 
German  troops  were  accompanied  by  motor 
machine-guns,  which  did  great  execution.  It 
is    evident    that    their    purpose    was    only    to 


reconnoitre  and  not  to  engage  in  serious  battle, 
for,  after  some  skirmishing,  they  retired.  The 
Belgians  imagined  that  they  had  defeated  and 
driven  them  back. 

On  the  next  day  word  came  into  Louvain,  the 
Belgian  Military  Headquarters,  that  a  German 
scouting  force  of  6,000  cavalry  was  moving  up- 
wards close  to  the  Dutch  frontier.  That  same 
afternoon  the  Germans  captured  Landen,  only 
38  miles  east  of  Brussels.  A  passenger  train  was 
stopped  when  it  arrived  there  by  a  strong  force 
of  the  enemy.  The  Germans  destroyed  the 
telegraphic  apparatus  and  the  railway  signals 
and  tore  up  the  rails,  and  then  moved  on. 

In  addition  to  the  cavalry  reconnaissance, 
military  aeroplanes  were  now  to  be  seen  advanc- 
ing and  hovering  at  great  height  over  the  Belgian 
positions. 

Another  engagement  was  reported  at  Tirle- 
mont, where  there  was  a  fierce  charge  of  Belgian 
lancers  against  German  Uhlans.  The  lancers 
routed  the  Germans,  who  returned  later,  how- 
ever, with  reinforcements  and  with  machine- 
guns  and  forced  the  Belgians,  in  turn,  to  fall 
back  upon  their  infantry  supports. 

Hasselt  was  the  scene  of  a  sustained  fight. 
Here  a  German  cavalry  division  supported  by  a 
battalion  of  infantry  and  12  guns  attacked 
a  Belgian  force  consisting  of  a  cavalry  division 
and  a  brigade  of  infantry.  The  place  was 
taken  and  retaken  three  times. 

It  became  evident  that  the  plan  of  the  German 
Army  was  to  move  northwards  through  the 
plain  between  Hasselt  and  Haelen  and  to  seek 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


265 


to  turn  the  Belgian  Army.  So  long  as  the 
Belgians  could  hold  the  line  they  had  taken 
up  from  Hasselt  to  St.  Trond  and  Tirlemont, 
all  was  well.  But  this  line  was  soon  broken, 
and  strong  German  forces  attacked  Hasselt  on 
the  one  side  and  Haelen  and  Diest  on  the  other. 
Early  on  the  morning  of  August  12  a  force 
of  German  cavalry,  estimated  at  10,000  men, 
accompanied  by  artillery  and  a  few  infantry, 
moved  forward  from  various  directions  towards 
Haelen  and  Diest.  The  country  in  this  region 
is  intersected  by  three  tributaries  of  the 
River  Demer,  the  Herck,  Gethe,  and  Velp. 
In  order  to  reach  Diest  it  was  necessary  to 
cross  the  Gethe  at  Haelen.  The  Belgians 
were  fully  informed  of  the  German  advance 
and  had  laid  their  plans  to  meet  them  at  this 
spot.  Barricades  were  erected  and  entrench- 
ments dug  ,and  field  artillery  placed  in 
advantageous  positions.  The  Germans  ap- 
proached about  11  o'clock  in  the  morning  and 
were  allowed  to  draw  comparatively  near, 
when  the  Belgian  artillery  opened  on  them. 
The  German  guns  were  quickly  unlimbered 
and  an  artillery  duel  followed.  The  Belgians 
had  their  ranges  and -were  able  to  plant  their 
shrapnel  over  the  cavalry  with  great  effect. 
The  utmost  violence  and  courage  were  shown 
on  either  side.  The  Belgian  cavalry  attempted 
to  charge  the  Germans  but  failed  on  account  of 


the  broken  nattire  of  the  ground.  The  German 
cavalry  in  turn  came  on  at  a  gallop  against  the 
Belgian  barricades.  As  they  approached, 
machine  guns  that  had  been  concealed  opened 
on  them,  sweeping  many  away.  Notwith- 
standing their  losses  the  Germans  rode  right 
up  to  the  barricades,  attempting  to  break 
through  them  or  to  tear  them  down.  The 
effort  was  hopeless,  and  after  losing  three- 
fifths  of  their  effective  strength  the  Germans 
had   to   retire. 

Other  German  forces  attempted  to  advance 
at  Cortenaeken.  There  were  fights  at  several 
river  bridges.  Everywhere  the  result  was 
the  same.  The  Belgians  themselves  were  the 
first  to  proclaim  the  great  coijl-age  shown  by 
the  Germans  in  this  sustained  engagement. 
At  one  point  when  they  were  driven  back  the 
survivors  sought  to  entrench  themselves  behind 
a  rampart  of  dead  horses  and  dead  men. 

Compared  with  the  fighting  that  was  soon 
to  follow,  the  engagement  at  Haelen. and  Diest 
may  seem  too  small  to  demand  much  attention. 
It  was  a  striking  example,  however,  of,  the  way 
in  which  the  Belgian  soldiers,  many  of  them 
called  to  the  colours  from  the  reserves  only  a 
fortnight  before,  were  able  to  face  the  foe. 
Several  stories  were  told  of  the  conduct  of  the 
Belgian  troops.     Here  is  one  : — 

"  One  notable  instance  of  Belgian   bravery 


GERMANS   HOLDING  A  REVIEW  IN  RUINED  LOUVAIN. 

,  yi>l ewspaper  lllustratiom. 


266 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


THE   CHURCH   AT   HAELEN. 

All  Belgian  Churches  appear  to  have  afiforded 

special  targets  for  the  Germans. 

[Newspaper  Illustrations. 

is  found  in  the  conduct  of  a  farrier  sergeant, 
Rousseau,  of  the  Chasseurs  a  Cheval.  At  the 
head  of  eight  men  he  charged  a  whole  squadron 
of  Uhlans,  who  dispersed,  leaving  many  dead 
and  wounded.  The  brave  squadron  of  Belgians 
returned  in  triumph  to  Haelen  with  a  dozen 
excellent  horses  as  trophies  of  their  exploit. 

"  During  the  afternoon  Lieutenant  Van 
Doren,  who  was  specially  detailed  to  defend 
Diest,  was  asked  to  send  reinforcements  to  the 
neighbouring  village'  of  Zechk.  There  was 
a  difficulty,  insomuch  as  practically  all  the 
available  troops  had  been  sent  forward  to 
Haelen,  but,  ixndismayed,  Lieutenant  Van  Doren 
summoned  the  town  fire  brigade  and,  picking 
up  as  many  soldiers  as  he  covild  from  different 
posts  on  the  road,  made  a  dash  for  Zechk." 

There  was  a  fight  at  Eghezee,  10  miles  to 
the  north  of  Namur,  where  a  party  of  350 
Uhlans  rode  up,  preceded  by  60  cyclists,  who 
had    forcibly    requisitioned    three   nxotor-cars. 


one  of  them  belon^g  to  a  doctor  of  the  Belgian 
Red  Cross  Service.  The  Germans  stayed  at 
the  place  for  the  night,  and  in  the  morning  a 
Belgian  airman,  flying  low  over  the  cornfield 
in  which  they  had  parked  their  horses,  drew 
their  fire,  thus  revealing  their  whereabouts 
to  some  Belgian  cyclist  scouts,  who  hurried 
in  the  direction  of  the  firing.  "  The  Uhlan 
cyclists,  who  were  out  scouting,  saw  them 
coming,"  wrote  the  special  correspondent  of 
The  Times  in  describing  the  scene,  "  and  rode 
back  as  hard  as  they  could  to  give  the  alarm. 
At  once  there  was  a  general  sauve  qui  peut. 
Most  of  the  Germ.ans  were  sitting  quietly 
in  the  cafes  of  the  village  of  Boneffe  at 
the  time,  talking  to  the  villagers.  They 
rushed  ofE  down  the  road  away  from 
Eghezee  leaving  everything  behind  them, 
horses,  rifles,  mitrailleuse  gims,  and  the  re- 
quisitioned motor-cars.  The  few  men  who  were 
looking  after  the  horses  in  the  cornfield  let 
them  loose,  the  bugler  who  was  with  the  fugi- 
tives sounded  a  call  to  which  they  rallied,  and 
as  the  pursuers,  only  about  30  in  number,  came 
round  the  corner  of  the  road  into  view,  the 
Uhlans  threw  themselves  on  to  their  horses  and 
galloped  off.  The  Belgians  meanwhile  dashed 
into  a  trench  in  a  field  of  beetroot,aabout  500 
yards  off,  which  had  been  thrown  up  last  week 
to  repel  the  expected  German  advance,  and 
opened  fire  on  the  horses  and  the  retreating 
Uhlans  on  the  road.  They  killed  four -or  five 
men  in  the  field  and  about  35  more  in  the 
retreat,  including  an  ober-lieutenant  and,  it  is 
thought,  the  colonel  and  several  of  the  horses.' 

On  Friday,  August  14,  it  was  officially  an- 
nounced that  French  troops  had  entered  Belgium 
by  Charleroi  and  had  joined  forces  with  the 
Belgian  Army.  Three  French  officers  had  been 
attached  to  the  Belgian  headquarters  and  two 
Belgian  officers  were  to  represent  the  Belgian 
Army  with  the  French  troops.  The  French  ad- 
vanced northwards  from  Charleroi  in  the  direc- 
tion of  Wavre.  They  were  reported  to  be  hold- 
ing a  very  strong  position,  and  numerous  engage- 
ments were  reported  between  the  French  and 
German  cavalry. 

Then  followed  a  slight  pause.  The  Germans, 
having  discovered  the  strength  of  the  enemy, 
awaited  reinforcements.  Then  cavalry  scouting 
parties,  however,  kept  creeping  around  by  the 
Dutch  frontier  until  some  of  them  were  within 
25  mUes  of  Antwerp  at  Gheel  and  Moll.  The 
Germans,  as  they  traveLed  across  the  country, 
ruined  most  of  the  villages  they  left  behind  them. 
They  hanged  or  shot  every  peasant  suspected  of 
resistance  ;  they  returned  to  places  where 
isolated  Uhlans  had  been.killed  a  few  days  earlier 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


267 


and  razed  them  to  the  ground.  The  mere 
suspicion  of  having  attacked  Germans  was 
sufficient  to  ensure  death.  The  pohcy  of  whole- 
sale terrorism  was  carried  out  on  too  wide  a 
scale  to  have  been  anything  but  a  deliberate  plan 
executed  in  obedience  to  orders  from  head- 
quarters. The  German  General  Staff  probably 
aimed  not  only  at  terrorizing  the  Belgians  and 
stamping  out  any  sign  of  civilian  resistance,  but 
also  at  creating  such  alarm  throughout  the 
neighbouring  Dutch  districts  that  the  people  of 
Holland  would  not  permit  their  Government  to 
taike  steps  against  so  merciless  a  foe. 

The  Belgian  General  Staff  continued  to  issue 
reassuring  bulletins  concerning  the  position  at 
the  front,  but  it  could  have  had  no  delusions 
about  the  real  state  of  things.  It  became  evi- 
dent, hour  by  hour,  that  the  position  of  Brussels 
was  becoming  more  perilous.  Once  the  Belgian 
Army  was  turned  Brussels  must  fall.  Should 
the  Germans  renew  the  attack  at  Diest  and 
succeed,  not  only  would  Brussels  itself  be  open, 
but  the  entire  Field  Army  would  be  threatened 
with  capture.  Brussels  could  not  be  defended. 
It  is  true  that  20,000  civil  guards  had  been 
armed  with  Mauser  rifles  and  the  environs  of  the 
city  had  been  entrenched  and  protected  with 
barbed  wire  entanglements.     Trenches  manned 


with  civil  guards  might  be  of  some  service  in 
checking  a  slight  cavalry  raid — they  could  do 
nothing  of  any  value  against  the  serious  advance 
in  force  such  as  it  was  now  more  and  more 
apparent  the  Germans  were  attempting. 

On  Monday,  August  17,  the  Germans  began 
their  advance  in  earnest.  One  strong  force 
drove  itself  in  like  a  wedge  between  the  French 
and  Belgian  Armies  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Wavre.  From  Diest,  from  Tirlemont,  and 
from  a  hundred  villages  around  came  news 
that  the  Germans  were  moving  forward  in  over- 
whelming force. 

The  Belgian  Army  resisted  desperately  all 
along  the  line,  but  it  was  hopelessly  out- 
numbered in  men,  in  field  artillery,  and  in 
machine-guns.  All  the  villages  had  been  made 
into  entrenched  camps,  with  wagons  upset 
across  the  roadways,  wire  entanglements  erected, 
and  trenches  dug.  But  the  Germans  adopted 
tactics  before  which  such  precautions  were  use- 
less. Villages  were  first  overwhelmed  with 
artillery  fire.  When  the  Belgian  cavalry 
attempted  to  repeat  their  former  exploits  and 
charge  the  enemy  they  were  met  by  the  fire  of 
well-placed  machine-guns,  before  which  they 
were  swept  away.  At  the  least  sign  of  weaken- 
ing the  German  cavalry  came  on  at  the  charge. 


THE      VILLAGE     OF      MELLE.  [Newspaper  Jllustrations, 

Scene  of  very  fierce  fighting.    Remains  of  a  German  gun  carriage. 


^ 


268 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


GERMAN    SOLDIERS    TENDING    THE 
WOUNDED. 

[Newspaper  Illustrations. 

Tirlemont  was  the  scene  of  a  specially  vigorous 
attack.  Powerful  German  guns  shelled  the 
place  with  great  effect,  and  then  the  German 
cavalry  suddenly  charged.  Their  advance  was 
so  rapid  and  so  unexpected  that  numbers  of 
peaceful  villagers,  women  and  children,  were 
unable  to  escape.  Hunrying  across  the  fields 
as  quickly  as  they  could  it  was  impossible 
to  get  away  from  the  German  cavalry, 
who  followed  them,  shooting  and  stabbing 
men  and  women  alike,  riding  down  children, 
sweeping  over  the  place  in  a  mad,  reckless 
charge. 

It  became  obvious  that  the  Belgian  Army 
could  stay  no  longer  in  its  positions.  Further 
delay  might  well  lead  to  total  destruction. 
Some  regiments  were  already  almost  completely 
wiped  out,  particularly  some  of  the  cavalry. 
Two  mixed  brigades  were  given  orders  to  hold 
the  enemy  back  at  any  cost  and  to  cover  a 
retreat  in  the  direction  of  Antwerp. 

The  defeat  of  the  Belgian  Field  Army  all 
along  the  line  was  complete  and  overwhelming. 
The  fighting  started  early  on  Monday,  August 
17th.  In  the  darkness  of  that  night  the  Belgian 
retreat  began. 


Everywhere  it  was  the  German  artillery 
that  broke  the  Belgian  defence  Now  the 
Belgians  were  forced  back  toVertryck.  Next 
they  were  at  Corbeek  Loo,  and  from  Corbeek 
Loo  they  had  to  retire  on  Louvain,  where 
they  were  prepared  to  make  a  last  stand. 
At  this  point  one  consideration  stayed  them. 
In  view  of  the  way  they  had  been  forced 
back,  they  could  hope  to  do  no  more  at 
Louvain  than  temporarily  to  arrest  the  Ger- 
man advance.  The  Germans,  already  pressing 
up,  would  undoubtedly  shell  and  destroy  the 
town,  and  would  probably  put  it  to  the  flames  as 
they  had  already  that  day  burned  numerous 
villages. 

To  every  Belgian  Louvain  was  a  city  of  pre- 
cious memories,  regarded  with  veneration,  to  be 
guarded,  protected,  and  shielded  from  harm. 
Its  ancient  University,  its  beautiful  Town  Hall, 
its  quaint  14th-century  buildings,  and  its  price- 
less library,  once  lost  could  never  be  replaced. 
To  risk  the  destruction  of  these  would  be  a  crime 
against  civilization.  Yielding  to  this  considera- 
tion, the  Belgian  Army  retired  beyond  the  city 
and  allowed  the  Germans  to  enter  without  oppo- 
sition. They  little  imagined — for  they  had  not 
yet  realized  the  depths  to  which  some  German 
commanders  would  go — that  in  surrendering 
Louvain  as  they  did  they  were  only  handing  it 
over  to  a  worse  fate  and  a  more  remorseless 
slaughter  than  any  which  fighting  could  have 
involved. 

The  position  of  the  Belgian  Army  was  im- 
possible. It  could  not  hope  to  keep  back  the 
Germans.  To  remain  in  the  open  much  longer 
was  to  invite  needless  destruction.  The  spirit 
of  the  men  was  for  the  moment  shaken  by  the 
terrific  attacks  they  had  endtu-ed.  The  Army 
was  separated  from  the  French.  Only  one 
course  remained — to  abandon  Brussels  and  to 
retire  upon  Antwerp.  The  main  fighting  had 
fallen  on  the  1st,  the  2nd,  and  the  3rd  divisions 
of  the  Army.  The  two  mixed  brigades  that 
covered  their  retreat  held  out  for  some  hours 
against  a  formidable  attack  made  by  the 
Germans  between  Becquoboort  and  Gelrode. 

The  Belgian  Staff  considered  it  necessary  to 
issue  a  somewhat  elaborate  explanation  of  the 
retirement.     It  ran  as  follows  : — 

"  At  the  present  moment  the  general  situation 
in  the  Belgian  theatre  of  war  may  be  described 
as  follows  : — After  having  lost  a  great  deal  of 
tim »,  a  large  number  of  men,  and  a  great  quan- 
tity of  material,  the  Prussian  Army  has  managed 
to  gain  ground  on  both  banks  of  the  Meuse  up  to 
a  line  where  it  is  in  contact  with  the  Allied  armies. 
The  German  troops  on  the  north  side  of  the 
Meuse  belong  to  various  corps  whose  operations 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


2G9 


have  been  principally  directed  against  Liege 
and  who  in  the  course  of  time  have  become 
available  in  other  directions.  There  is  also  a 
strong  force  of  cavalry,  by  means  of  which  the 
Germans  have  been  able  to  make  a  great  show 
by  extending  to  the  north  and  south.  In  the 
south  they  came  into  collision  with  our  troops 
and  were  repulsed.  In  the  north,  on  the  other 
hand,  they  found  an  open  road,  and  small  por- 
tions of  them  managed  to  make  dashes  far  afield. 
"  In  a  word,  the  Germans  have  taken  the 
measure  of  our  position,  but  that  they  should 
have  lost  a  fortnight  in  attaining  this  result  is 
all  to  the  honour  of  our  arms.  That  may  have 
incalculable  consequences  for  the  issues  of  the 
operations.  The  normal  development  of  the 
latter  according  to  the  plan  concerted  between 
the  Allies  may  lead  to  the  carrying  out  of 
'  manoeuvres  '  —  that  is  to  say,  to  changes  of 
position  in  order  to  effect  a  change  in  the  general 
situation.  We  are  on  the  outside  wing,  where 
these  manoeuvres  are  nearly  always  necessitated 
either  for  the  direct  or  indirect  protection  of  the 
flank.  Our  Army  therefore  must  necessarily 
modify  its  original  positions  and  thus  carry  out 
completely  the  first  task  devolving  upon  it, 
which  consists  in  gaining  time.  There  is,  con- 
sequently, no  ground  for  anxiety  if  the  Army 
makes  a  movement  in  such  and  such  a  direc- 
tion, and  arm-chair  strategists  need  not  occupy 
themselves  with  the  arrangements  made,  but 


should  realize  that  our  Army  now  belongs  to  a 
co-ordinated  whole  and  remember  that  the 
strategic  conditions  have  entirely  changed  since 
close  conteict  has  been  established  with  our 
allies  on  our  right. 

"  The  object  of  the  operations  as  at  present 
going  on  is  not  to  cover  such  and  such  a  district 
or  such  and  such  a  town,  which  has  now  become 
a  matter  of  only  secondary  importance^ 

"  The  pursuit  of  the  aim  assigned  to  the 
Belgian  troops  in  the  general  plan  of  campaign 
preponderates  over  everything.  This  object 
cannot  be  revealed,  and  the  most  well-informed 
persons  are  unable  to  discover  it,  in  view  of  the 
veil  of  obscurity  which  is  rightly  being  spread 
over  all  the  news  allowed  to  come  through  re- 
garding the  operations.  Fighting  is  going  on 
along  the  whole  front  from  Basel  to  Diest. 
The  closer  the  contact  comes  between  the  two 
armies  and  the  closer  one  gets  to  a  decisive  action 
the  more  one  must  expect  to  see  an  advantage 
gained  at  one  point  while  ground  is  lost  at 
another.  That  is  only  to  be  expected  in  the 
case  of  battles  taking  place  over  such  immense 
fronts  as  those  occupied  by  the  great  armies  of 
modern  times. 

"  To  sum  up,  one  may  say  that  what  is  going 
on  at  o^yr  gates  is  not  the  only  thing  to  be 
thought  of.  A  strategic  movement  conceived 
with  a  well-defined  object  is  not  necessarily  a 
retreat.     The  fighting  which  has  taken  place  at 


PRIEST  ASSISTING   THE   WOUNDED   AFTER   THE    BATTLE    OF   HOFSTADE. 

V  [Daily  Mirror. 


270 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


the  front  diiring  the  last  few  days  has  resulted 
in  making  the  enemy  more  circumspect  and  in 
delaying  his  forward  march,  to  the  great  advan- 
tage of  the  whole  scheme  of  operations.  There 
is  no  reason  at  the  present  time  for  letting  one- 
self be  hung  up,  thus  playing  into  the  hands  of 
the  Germans.  That  is  the  motive  of  the  move- 
ments now  being  carried  out.  We  are  not 
beaten,  far  from  it,  but  are  making  arrange- 
ments for  beating  the  enemy  in  the  best  possible 
conditions.  The  public  should,  in  this  matter, 
place  all  trust  in  the  commander  of  the  Army 
and  should  remain  calnx  and  confident." 

It  has  been  asked  why  the  French  Army, 
resting  upon  its  lines  from  Namur  northwards, 
did  not,  by  a  forward  movement,  attempt  to 
relieve  the  Belgian  position.  A  considerable 
German  force  was  already  facing  and  engaging 
the  French.  The  blow  on  the  Belgians  came  so 
suddenly  that  there  was  scarcely  time  for  French 
relieving  forces  to  arrive.  Further,  there  is 
every  reason  to  believe  that  the  French  at  this 
stage  were  not  in  sufficient  force  north  of  Namur 
to  make  such  an  advance  possible.  The  main 
French  armies  were  concentrated,  not  here,  but 
further  south.     Even  after  the  Belgian  Field 


Army  had  been  defeated  the  French  General 
Staff  apparently  believed  that  the  advance  into 
Belgium  was  little  more  than  a  feint  made  to 
take  attention  off  the  Alsace-Lorraine  front. 
Believing  this,  it  refvised,  imtil  the  danger  to  its 
own  left  flank  was  almost  overwhelming,  to  alter 
its  original  plans. 

Brussels,  the  Belgian  capital,  rested  seciore 
from  the  opening  of  the  war  in  the  conviction 
that  the  English  would  come  to  help  it  before  the 
Germans  could  arrive,  and  that  another  Water- 
loo would  be  fought  beyond  the  suburbs  of  the 
city  with  the  same  result  as  the  battle  99  years 
before. 

The  General  Staff  issued  reassuring  biilletins. 
The  Press  fully  supported  the  attempt  to  main- 
tain the  confidence  of  the  people.  There  was 
little  grumbling,  and  no  signs  of  weakening.  A 
fierce  flame  of  patriotism  had  been  kindled, 
and  manifested  itself  among  all  classes.  If  devo- 
tion and  self-sacrifice  could  have  made  up  for 
lack  of  military  training,  it  certainly  would  have 
been  accomplished  here.  "  This  is  a  war  for 
home  and  for  faith — in  the  truest  sense  of  the 
word  a  holy  war,"  wrote  one  observer  at  Brussels 
at  the  time.     "  It  has  united  all  classes  ;   it  has 


HOMELESS. 


[Nnospaptr  Illustrations. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


271 


GERMAN  TROOPS  RESTING  AFTER  THE  FIGHTING  AT  VISE. 

iNtwspaper  Illustrations. 


made  of  the  nation  one  man.  The  very  clerks 
in  the  Government  offices  are  giving  their  ser- 
vices voluntarily  ;  the  workmen  lay  telegraph 
wires,  handle  trains,  perform  all  manner  of 
services,  in  many  cases  without  reward.  In  the 
country  villages  peasant  women  bring  bread 
and  beer  for  the  soldiers,  giving  of  their  best 
freely.  They  scorn  payment.  And  the  poorest 
of  the  poor  have  contributed  their  pence  gladly 
to  the  cause." 

There  could  no  longer  be  ariy  ignoring  the 
realities  of  the  war,  even  had  the  people 
desired  it.  The  city  was  now  the  great 
receiving  home  for  the  wounded  from  the 
front.  Royal  palaces,  hotels,  private  houses, 
and  public  institutions  were  occupied  by 
doctors  and  niirses,  and  steady  processions  of 
the  wounded  arrived  either  in  specially  equipped 
automobiles  or  by  train.  The  contingents  of 
disabled  men  were  received  often  enough  by 
vast  crowds  who  stood  bare-headed  and  bowing 
as  a  token  of  respect  as  the  stretchers  were 
borne  by.  The  Queen  led  the  Red  Cross  work, 
and  women  of  every  rank  joined  in  the  mission 
of  pity  and  help  for  the  victims  of  war. 

Apart  from  the  woxinded,  another  army  of 
war  victims  was  beginning  to  poixr  into  the 
city — refugees  from  the  villages  and  towns 
destroyed  by  the  advancing  Germans.  Many 
of  them  had  nothing  but  what  they  stood  up 
in.  Others  had  baskets  and  bags  containing 
all  that  was  left  of  their  worldly  possessions. 
Mothers  came  along  footsore  with  their  children, 
well-dressed  mothers  and  well-dressed  children 
often  enough,  accustomed  hitherto  to  a  life  of 
comfort,  and  now  with  their  homes  burned 
and  their  men-folk  killed,  penniless,  not  knowing 


what  to  do,  where  to  go,  or  where  to  obtain  their 
next  meal.  Here  were  peasant  women  who 
told  how  their  husbands  and  sons,  venturing 
to  resist  the  Uhlan  outposts,  had  been  promptly 
hanged  from  the  nearest  trees.  Here  were 
young  lads  who  related  how,  in  their  villages, 
all  the  men  had  been  seized  as  hostages,  the 
priest  and  the  doctor  and  the  schoolmaster 
shot,  and  the  remainder  sent  off  they  knew 
not  where.  Many  of  the  tales  were  more  dread- 
ful still,  tales  which  left  the  listener  wondering 
whether  grief  had  turned  the  brains  of  the  people 
or  whether  the  details  which  they  passionately 
poured  out  of  outrage  and  maiming  and  mixrder 
of  women  and  children  could  be  true. 

Significant  preparations  were  going  on  for 
the  defence  of  the  city.  Much  confidence  was 
reposed  in  the  civil  guard,  who  could  be  seen 
drilling  in  the  parks.  Trenches  were  being  dug, 
and  barbed  wire  barricades  put  up  out  on  the 
Chaussee  de  Louvain,  in  the  Champs  des  MancEu- 
vres,  and  beyond  the  cemeteries.  The  military 
authorities  explained  that  these  precautions  were 
necessary  because  various  scattered  bands  of 
Uhlans  were  about.  They  were  being  rounded  up 
by  the  Belgians,  and  some  of  them  might  be  driven 
back  in  such  a  way  as  to  fall  upon  the  city, 
which  therefore  must  be  protected  against 
the  danger  of  a  sudden  raid.  Such  a  raid,  it 
was  added  in  an  official  annovmcement,  was 
for  that  matter  entirely  improbable. 

On  Monday,  August  17th,  however,  the  real 
gravity  of  the  situation  became  more  evident. 
Refugees  began  to  arrive  in  increased  niimbers. 
The  Government  considered  it  necessary  to  make 
a  formal  statement  of  the  measures  taken  for 
local   defence.     At   the  same  time  significant 


^ 


272 


THE    TIMEIS    HISTORY     OF    THE     WAR, 


BELGIANS  DRIVEN  FROM  THEIR  HOMES. 


[Newspaper  lllustmtions. 


notices  were  put  in  the  papers,  warning  civilians 
that  they  must  not  attempt  to  resist  German 
troops  if  they  arrived,  but  must  stay  in  their 
houses,  close  their  doors  and  windows,  and  do 
nothing  which  would  give  the  enemy  an  excuse 
to  shoot  them  down. 

The  Press  was  under  the  strictest  censorship. 
A  decree  of  the  17th  limited  the  editions  of  the 
newspapers  to  two  a  day.  Later  the  limitation 
was  made  still  closer.  Each  paper,  before 
publication,  had  to  be  submitted  in  proof  to 
military  censors,  who  cut  out  whatever  they  did 
not  like.  One  paper  did  attempt  to  give  some 
warning  of  M'hat  might  happen.  It  was  quickly 
brought  to  book. 

By  the  afternoon  of  the  17th  it  became  clear  to 
the  authorities  that  Brussels  could  not  be  held, 
and  it  was  determined  to  transfer  the  seat  of 
Government  to  Antwerp.  The  Official  Journal 
attempted  to  minimize  the  importance  of  this 
news  as  much  as  it  could  in  a  notice 
published  next  morning.  "  Contrary  to  the 
provisions  of  the  law  of  1859,"  it  said,  "  the 
Government  has  remained  in  Brussels  during 
the  phase  of  the  war  in  which  our  Army  was 
alone  to  oppose  the  enemy.  Now,  when  the 
Armies  of  our  friends  are  on  our  territory,  the 
Government  has  judged  that  its  seat  may  without 
inconvenience  be  transferred  to  Antwerp,  in 
conformity  with  the  wish  of  those  who  created 
that  great  fortified  position. 


"It  is  not  that  events  are  more  grave  than 
they  have  been  hitherto.  On  the  contrary, 
we  are  recording  a  new  success  of  our  troops 
supported  by  French  cavalry.  But  as  it  is 
necessary  that  the  transfer  should  be  made 
normally  and  without  the  slightest  interruption 
in  the  execution  of  the  sovereign  functions, 
the  Government  has  considered  it  preferable 
to  begin  to  transfer  the  services  of  the  various 
Ministries  while  the  families  of  the  Ministers 
remain  in  the  capital.  Certain  of  the  Ministers 
will  therefore  take  up  their  residence  in  Antwerp, 
where  the  w£ir  services  will  be  better  placed 
while  the  Army  is  in  the  field.  In  deference 
to  the  desire  of  the  Government,  her  Majesty 
the  Queen  and  the  Royal  Princes  will  remove 
to  the  Palace  at  Antwerp.  As  long  as  the 
King  remains  among  our  valiant  soldiers  the 
establishment  of  the  Royal  Palace  will  con- 
tinue to  work  in  Brussels. 

"  At  the  request  of  the  Government  several 
statesmen  holding  the  rank  of  ISIinister,  especially 
those  of  the  Opposition,  will  proceed  temporarily 
to  Antwerp." 

Even  before  the  announcement  was  meide 
the  military  archives  had  been  dispatched  in 
motor  wagons  to  Antwerp.  State  papers  and 
treasure  were  also  on  their  way. 

During  all  these  stormy  scenes  of  impending 
t  raged  y  Brussels  had  had  its  fill  of  emotion.  Day 
by  day  during  the  previous  fortnight  crowds  had 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


273 


assembled  and  demonstrated  in  the  streets 
on  any  excuse.  Now  it  was  the  King  riding 
to  Parliament,  riding  on  a  war-horse  in  the 
uniform  in  which  he  was  to  take  the  field  at 
the  head  of  the  Army.  Now  it  was  the  Queen 
and  the  Royal  children  driving  through  the 
streets  followed  everywhere  by  the  shouts 
and  acclamations  of  the  people.  Now  it  was 
soldiers  going  forth  to  the  south,  the  regulars, 
the  volunteers,  the  special  corps,  all  of  them 
surrounded,  not  alone  by  their  own  friends, 
but  by  all  who  could  gather  to  encourage  them. 
Now  the  people  foiuid  fresh  cause  for  enthusiasm 
in  the  sight  of  the  uniform  of  a  French  Army 
officer.  That  surely  meant  the  arrival  of  the 
French  troops  !  Now  they  cheered  at  the  word 
that  the  English  were  coming. 

The  city  had  determined  to  maintain  its 
good  spirits  and  to  show  a  brave  front.  What 
if  the  Germans  were  only  forty  miles  or  so  to 
the  south  ?  The  Allies  would  see  to  it  that  they 
came  no  farther. 

In  the  early  days,  before  the  Press  restrictions 
were  enforced,  limiting  the  ntmiber  of  editions 
issued  each  day,  the  newspapers  appeared 
every  hour  and  were  bought  eagerly.  The' 
streets  were  decked  with  flags.  The  "  Brabaji- 
9onne "  was  heard  on  all  sides.  At  certain 
hours  one  might  have  imagined,  were  it  not  for 


the  processions  of  the  woTirided  and  the  houses 
marked  with  the  Red  Cross,  that  Brussels  was 
en  fete. 

Then  the  great  display  of  enthusiasm  cooled. 
The  constantly  repeated  rumours  of  the  arrival 
of  foreign  armies  turned  out  all  to  be  false. 
Day  after  day  people  got  tired  of  hearing  that 
the  English  were  a  mile  or  two  away,  or  the 
French  just  to  hand.  "  I  received  informa- 
tion this  morning,"  wrote  one  experienced 
correspondent  on  the  day  after  the  outbreak 
of  the  war,  "  that  British  troops  had  landed 
and  were  on  their  way  to  the  frontier  to  defend 
Belgian  neutrality.  I  at  once  drove  out  to 
Laeken,  through  which  suburb  they  must 
pass.  There  I  learned  that  the  news  was 
premature.  French  regiments  are  alleged  to 
have  arrived  at  Namur.  Others  are  marching 
into  Belgium."  Multiply  such  reports  a 
thousandfold,  add  to  them  detailed  accotmts 
of  the  automobiles  attached  to  the  British 
Army,  of  the  flower-decked  guns,  of  the  cheering 
and  triumphant  British  troops,  and  of  the 
countless  armies  of  French  infantry  marching 
to  the  north-east,  and  the  reader  will  have 
some  idea  of  the  reports  which,  never  proving 
true,  made  the  hearts  of  the  Brtxxellois  sick. 

Then  there  came  sonxething  else  to  think  of. 
Rimaours   of   massacres    at    Vise   racked    with 


GERMAN  TROOPS  HAVING  THEIR  MIDDAY  MEAL  IN  THE  GRANDE  PLACE,  BRUSSELS. 

iNtwspaptr  /Uustraiums, 


274 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


BELGIAN    AIRMEN.  [Nevspaper  Illustrations. 

They  have  been  of  great  use  in  locating  the  enemy's  positions. 


anxiety  many  of  the  people  in  the  city  who 
had  friends  and  relatives  at  Vise.  The  stories 
of  massacre  and  of  looting  to  the  south  were 
no  more  impersonal  to  the  folks  of  the 
capital  than  stories  of  the  bvu-ning  of  Kentish 
villages  or  Nori;hampton  farms  would  bo 
impersonal  to  Londoners.  The  authorities 
tried  to  suppress  the  accounts  of  a  ruined  country 
side,  but  the  very  attempt  made  them  spread 
the  more.  Then  the  sight  of  the  civil  guards  at 
drill  around  the  town,  the  digging  of  entrench- 
ments and  the  building  of  the  barricades,  were 
recognized  even  by  the  most  optimistic  as  having 
a  tremendous  significance.  When  on  the 
morning  of  Tuesday,  August  18th,  it  was  known 
that  the  Grovemment  had  transferred  itself  to 
Antwerp,  anxiety  became  acute. 

Even  as  late  as  Tuesday  night,  however,  many 
people  in  the  city  attempted  to  argue  that  all 
would  yet  be  well.  The  French,  it  was  said, 
were  assuming  the  aggressive  and  were  hunting 
the  Uhlans  out  of  the  woods  and  back  across  the 
roads  between  Namur  and  Brussels.  The 
Germans  had  chemged  their  pl£in  of  campaign. 


They  had  lost  so  much  in  attacking  the  Belgian 
Army  that  they  would  now  abandon  the  north- 
ward move.  '  "  From  a  good  source  I  have 
the  news,''  wrote  one  correspondent  on  Tuesday 
night,  "  that  the  French  generals  have  chosen 
their  battle-ground  and  have  the  Germans  now 
in  such  a  position  that  they  cannot  avoid  fight- 
ing a  battle  in  which  two -thirds  of  their  northern 
forces  must  be  engaged  if  it  is  to  face  the  main 
body  of  the  French  which  has  been  rolled  up  into 
Belgium."  Obviously,  if  such  a  fight  came, 
the  Germans  would  be  too  fully  engaged  to 
make  an  immediate  attempt  to  press  on  to 
the  city. 

Men  told  one  another  in  the  cafes  and  in  the 
streets  that  the  approach  of  the  Grermans 
formed  part  of  the  Allies'  plan.  They  were  being 
lured  on  to  destruction.  They  had  not  yet 
secured  a  victory.  Brussels  was  the  bait,  and 
in  attempting  to  take  it  the  foe  were  to  be 
caught  in  a  steel  trap  from  which  there  would 
be  no  escape. 

The  stories  of  coming  victory  grew  as  they 
passed  from  mouth  to  mouth.     Meanwhile  the 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


275 


peopJe  eouJd  hear  the  dull  sounds  of  explosions 
in  the  distarce  as  bridges  and  roadways  were 
being  blown  up  to  check  the  German  advance. 
In  the  suburbs  the  poorest  inhabitants  gave  up 
everything  they  could  in  helping  to  build  up  the 
barricades  against  the  Germans.  "  Hundreds  of 
people,"  wrote  one  observer,  "  have  sacrificed  all 
their  household  furniture  in  the  common  cause. 
Beds,  pianos,  carts,  boxes,  baskets  of  earth — 
one  child  I  saw  filling  up  a  basket  from  the 
gutter — are  all  piled  up.  Roads  and  bridges 
had  been  destroyed  wholesale." 

During  Tuesday  night  and  all  Wednesday 
armies  of  refugees  poured  in.  They  came  in 
family  parties,  small  and  great,  old  women  of 
80  helping  along  little  toddling  children,  men  and 
women  in  their  prime  with  faces  stricken  with 
grief  which  told  of  ruined  homes  and  broken 
prospects.  Some  sat  down  in  the  me  in  streets 
on  their  little  bundles,  waiting  on  fate.  Others, 
people  of  means,  rushed  throvigh  in  their  car- 
riages to  the  coast,  "  On  Wednesday,"  wrote 
one  visitor,  "  the  aristocracy  from  the  sur- 
rovinding  chateaux  began  to  come  in  in 
carts,  motor-cars,  and  wagons.  I  saw  women 
and  children  in  every  sort  of  clothes  mixed  up 
with  household  goods,  many  of  which  were  quite 
without  value  in  such  a  crisis,  but   which   had 


been  snatched  up  at  the  moment  of  departure 
These  people  with  money  did  not  stay  a  second  in 
Brussels,  but  continued  their  wild  peregrination 
towards  the  coast.  Every  motor,  cart,  and 
carriage  was  plastered  with  huge  red  crosses 
hastily  improvised  out  of  wallpaper,  old  petti- 
coats, or  any  material  which  happened  to 
come  to  hand.  That  evening  thousands  of 
terrified  peasants  poured  down  the  Avenue  du 
Regent,  weeping  and  bemoaning  their  fate. 
They,  poor  souls,  had  no  money  and  nowhere  to 
go  to.  For  the  first  time  in  their  lives  they 
found  themselves  homeless.  It  was  a  terrible 
sight."  Every  train  going  to  the  north  was 
packed  with  people.  Thousands  of  Bruxellois, 
caught  in  sudden  fear,  not  knowing  what  to  do, 
started  tramping  out  on  the  road  towards 
Ghent. 

The  great  masses  of  the  people,  however, 
took  the  graver  situation  with  comparative 
calmness,  and  most  strangers  who  were  present 
recorded  their  surprise,  not  so  much  at  the 
crowds  of  refugees  in  the  streets  or  the  crowds 
of  others  seeking  to  escape  from  the  city  to  the 
north,  but  at  the  vast  number  of  men  and  women 
who  went  about  their  work  quietly  right  up  to 
the  end.  Even  yet  they  did  not  give  up  all  hopes 
of  succovir.     But  if  the  worst  were  to  come,  the 


GERMAN  INFANTRY  IN  THE  SQUARE  AT  BRUSSELS. 

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277 


278 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


German  occupation  of  the  city  would  be  only 
momentary.  They  rested  content  in  the 
Tightness  of  their  cause.  It  became  generally 
known  on  the  19th  that  the  Belgian  Army 
had  retired  from  Louvain  towards  Antwerp. 
It  was  reported  at  first  that  a  considerable 
Belgian  force  still  held  the  high  wooded  country 
between  Louvain  and  Brussels,  that  it  was  well 
equipped  with  artillery,  and  that  it  could  hold 
any  attack  back.  These  troops,  it  was  added, 
would  be  stiU  further  reinforced,  and  would  have 
as  their  reserve  the  much-advertised  civil 
guard.  But  those  at  the  head  of  affairs  had  no 
delusions.  They  knew  very  well  that  any  effort 
to  check  the  Germans  at  this  stage  covild  only 
result  in  more  or  less  destruction  to  Bmssels 
itself.  There  were  those  who  yet  advocated 
fighting  to  the  last.  They  were  in  the  minority, 
and  cool  advisers  from  neutral  nations  strongly 
urged  the  duty  of  not  attempting  an  impossible 
task.  To  attempt  a  battle  at  the  barricades 
would  only  mean  bombardment  of  the  city  and 
street  fighting,  with  all  the  horrors  that  street 
fightmg  entails.  The  wiser  cotinsels  prevailed, 
and  it  was  resolved  to  allow  the  Germans  to 
enter  peacefully. 

That  night  a  proclamation  was  posted  on  the 
walls  of  Brussels.  It  was  signed  by  M.  Max, 
the  Burgomaster,  who  in  the  anxiovis  weeks 
that  followed  was  to  win  high  reputation  by  his 


courage  and  common  sense  in  dealing  with  the 
Germans,  and  read  : — 

Despite  the  heroic  resistKance  of  our  troops,  aided  by 
the  Allied  armies,  it  is  to  be  feared  'hat  the  enemy  may 
occupy  Brussels.  In  the  event  of  such  an  occurrence 
I  rely  on  the  population  to  remain  calm.  Avoid  all 
panic.  The  laws  of  war  forbid  the  enemy  obtaining 
by  force  information  relating  to  national  defence. 
The  inhabitants  of  Brussels  have  the  right  to  refuse 
all  such  information. 

As  long  as  I  am  alive  or  a  free  agent  I  shall  endeavour 
to  protect  the  rights  and  dignity  of  my  fellow-citizens. 
I  pray  you  to  render  my  task  less  difficult  by  abstain- 
ing frona  aU  hostile  acts.  Citizens,  whatever  befall, 
listen  to  your  burgomaster.  He  will  not  betray  you. 
Long  Uve  a  free  and  independent  Belgium  !  Long 
live  Brussels  ! 

On  Thursday  morning  the  Burgomaster  went 
out  in  a  motor-ceir,  accompanied  by  his  fotu* 
sheriffs,  to  meet  the  Grerman  mihtary  comman- 
der. He  was  attired  in  his  scarf  of  office.  He 
was  received  with  great  brusqueness,  bidden 
to  remove  his  scarf,  and  then  asked  if  he 
was  prepared  to  surrender  the  city  vincon- 
ditionally.  If  not,  it  would  be  bombarded.  He 
intimated  that  he  had  no  other  choice  than 
to  yield.  He  was  thereupon  informed  that  he 
would  be  held  personally  responsible  for  the  good 
behaviovir  of  the  citizens,  and  that  any  acts  of 
violence  on  the  part  of  the  people  against  the 
Germans  would  be  visited  on  him  and  the  other 
responsible  heads  of  the  city.  The  German  troops 
would  enter  and  occupy  the  place  that  day. 


GERMAN  TROOPS  OUTSIDE  THE  BOURSE,  BRUSSELS. 

{NttDSpaper  Ihustrations. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


279 


M.    MAX,  [Central  News. 

Burgomaster  of  Brussels. 

The  German  Commander,  General  Sixtus  von 
Arnim,  issued  the  following  proclamation, 
which  was  placarded  in  Brussels  : — 

German  troops  will  pass  through  Brvissels  to-day 
and  on  the  following  days,  and  are  obliged  by  circum- 
stances to  demand  from  ^the  city  lodging,  food,  and 
supplies.  All  these  matters  will  be  regularly  arranged 
through  the  mimicipal  authorities. 

I  expect  the  population  to  conform  itself  without 
resistance  to  these  necessities  of  war,  and  in  particular 
to  commit  no  act  of  aggression  against  the  safety  of  the 
troops,  and  promptly  to  furnish  the  supplies  demanded. 

In  this  case  I  give  every  guarantee  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  city  and  the  safety  of  its  inhabitants. 

If,  however,  there  should  -be,  as  there  has  un- 
ortvmately  been  elsewhere,  any  act  of  aggression 
against  the  soldiers,  the  burning  of  buildings,  or  ex- 
plosions of  any  kind,  I  shall  be  compelled  to  take  the 
iseverest  measures. 

The  General  Commanding  the  Army  Corps, 

Sixtus  von  Abneb. 

During  the  morning  qtiiet  crowds  assembled 
n  the  main  streets  in  the  heart  of  the  capital. 
No  one  knew  quite  what  to  expect.  Every  one 
was  drawn  by  curiosity  to  see  the  arrival  of  the 
invader.     It  was  told  that  the  Germans  were 


COUNT    VON    ARNIM,         [Stanleys. 

who  was  Military  Governor  of  Brussels. 

already  outside  in  great  force  on  the  roads  to 
Waterloo,  to  Louvain,  and  to  Tervueren. 

The  German  General  Staff  had  evidently 
ordered  that  the  entry  into  Brussels  was  to  be 
made  as  effective  as  possible.  In  place  of  parad- 
ing the  thinned  ranks  of  the  regiments  that  had 
fought  so  hard  on  the  road  from  Liege,  a  fresh 
Army  Corps  was  brought  up.  The  people  of 
Brussels  expected  to  see  exhausted  and  battle- 
worn  soldiers — ^men  bearing  scars  and  wounds, 
with  torn  xmiforms  and  depleted  ranks.  The 
reaUty  was  very  different. 

Soon  after  2  in  the  afternoon  the  distant 
sound  of  artillery  fire  proclaimed  the  approach 
of  the  Germans.  Then  the  sound  of  music 
could  be  heard,  and  the  advance  guards  of  the 
triiunphant  Army  appeared.  At  the  head  rode 
a  Prussian  general,  described  by  onlookers  as 
'■  a  swarthy,  black-moustached,  ill-natured- 
brute,  dressed  in  khaki-grey."  Had  he  been 
Apollo  himself  his  looks  wotild  scarce  have 
pleased  the  people  of  Brussels  that  day.    Every 


280 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


regiment,  infantry  or  cavalry,  had  its  band,  and 
the  music  of  the  instruments  was  broken  by  the 
singing  by  the  soldiers  of  "  Die  Wacht  am  Rhein  " 
and  "  Deutschland  iiber  Alles."  The  troops  were 
fresh  and  marched  as  though  on  parade.  Their 
uniforms  were  new,  their  equipment  undamaged, 
and  their  military  elan  such  as  to  arouse  the 
unwilling  adnu  ration  of  the  onlookers.  The 
long  procession  of  troops  was  estimated  to 
niunber  40,000.  Every  branch  of  the  German 
service  was  represented.  One  part  was  a  pro- 
cession of  a  hundred  motor-cars  with  machine- 
gnns  mounted  on  them.  There  was  a  com- 
plete siege  train.  The  whole  Army  was  dressed 
in  one  colour — a  greenish  grey.  The  very 
guns  and  the  pontoon  bridges  and  the  equip- 
ment of  the  sappers  were  all  grey.  It  was  the 
war  dress  of  Germany. 

The  Army  moved  down  the  Chaussee  de 
Louvain  into  the  Grands  Boulevards  up  in 
the  direction  of  the  Gare  du  Nord.  As  they 
reached  the  main  section  of  the  route  the 
word  of  command  broke  out  and  the  infantry 
instantly  broke  into  the  famous  German  goose- 
step.  It  was  a  dramitic  touch  and  it  had  its 
effect. 

The  people  watched  and  wondered  and  feared. 


"  Towards  the  centre  of  the  city,"  wrote  the 
special  correspondent  of  The  Times,  "  the 
crowds  had  gathered  on  the  pavements  ten  and 
twelve  deep.  In  stony  silence  they  watched 
the  German  soldiers  pass ;  the  children  ap- 
peared interested  in  the  wonderful  spectacle, 
women  trembled  and  whispered  beneath  their 
breath,  old  men  and  men  too  young  for  the 
Belgian  colours  stood  white  as  ghosts  and 
speechless  with  anger." 

The  troops  quickly  took  possession  of  various 
strategic  points  in  the  city.  All  fears  of  im- 
mediate massacre  were  set  at  rest.  The 
soldiers,  so  far  from  plundering  the  people, 
seemed  anxious  to  prove  the  German  power 
and  prosperity  by  their  display  of  abundance 
of  money  and  their  willingness  to  spend  it. 
M.  Max.  the  Burgomaster,  was  still  held  re- 
sponsible for  much  of  the  routine  work  of  l:cal 
administration.  The  Germans  appointed  their 
own  Civil  Governor,  who  was  the  supreme 
authority.  One  of  the  first  demands  of  the 
Germans  when  they  had  tiiken  control  vf  as  for 
an  indemnity  of  eight  million  pounds  as  a  war 
lev3^  This  demand  the  Burgomaster  informed 
them  could  not  be  complied  with,  as  the  city's 
money  had  been  sent  away  to  Antwerp. 


A    COMMON    SIGHT    IN    DISTRESSED    BELGIUM; 
Villagers  flying  from  the  approaching  Germans. 


[Nneipaper  Illustrations. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


281 


DESTITUTE    BELGIANS. 
They  came  from  the  villages  around  Malines  before  the  bombardment. 

[Newspaper  Illustrations. 


With  the  German  entry  into  Brussels  the 
first  stage  of  the  war  came  to  an  end.  The 
Belgians  had  done  their  work  well.  They  had 
succeeded  in  holding  up  the  German  advance 
in  unexpected  fashion.  They  had  given 
France  time  to  complete  the  mobilization  of 
her  forces,  and  England  opportunity  to  land 
her  completely  equipped  Expeditionary  Force 
in  France.  The  war  was  now  to  assume 
another   aspect.     In   place   of   the   fighting   of 


comparatively  small  forces  along  limited  fronts 
in  Belgium,  there  was  to  be  direct  conflict 
between  the  big  armies  of  France  backed  by 
the  English  against  the  forces  of  Germany, 
first  on  the  Belgian  frontier  and  then  on 
French  soil.  Germany  had  made  ready 
for  her  great  blow.  The  blow  was  now 
about  to  be  struck,  to  use  the  characteristic 
phiase  of  the  German  General  Staff,  "like  a 
thtinderbolt." 


282 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


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MAP  TO   ILLUSTRATE  THE  FRENCH   OPERATIONS    IN   ALSACE. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

THE    FIRST    FRENCH    OFFENSIVE 

IN    ALSACE. 


The  French  Invade  Alsace — Criticisms  on  General  Joffre's  Strategy — His  Career — 
The  Frontiers  Involved — Belfort  the  French  Base — French  Frontier  Defences — The 
Object  of  an  Offensive — Fermi  nt  in  Alsace-Lorraine— Probability  of  a  German  Offen- 
sive— The  French  Raid — Thann,  Altkirch,  and  MCtlhausen  Captured — The  German 
Counter-attack  Forces  the  French  to  Withdraw — Superiority  of  French  Artillery 
Established  —  Serious  French  Invasion  of  Alsace  —  Germans  Routed — ^Thann  and 
MtJLHAusEN  Retaken — Premature  Jubilation  in  Paris — German  Counter-offensive  Drives 
THE  French  from  the  Lost  Provinces. 


ON  August  2  the  Germans  had  violated 
the  neutrality  of  Luxemburg  ;  on 
the  3rd  they  had  invaded  Belgium  ; 
and  from  the  3rd  to  the  5th  they  were 
attempting  to  take  some  of  the  forts  of  Liege  by 
a  caup  de  main.  Two  days  later  the  French 
forces,  moving  to  succour  the  Belgians,  joined 
hands  with  their  new  allies,  while  simultaneously 
a  French  brigade  from  Belfort — at  the  point 
where  the  frontiers  of  Germany,  France,  and 
Switzerland  converge — advanced  into  Upper 
Alsace  and,  towards  nightfall,  occupied  Altkirch. 
The  next  day — the  8th — Mvilhausen  was 
entered  by  the  French,  and  the  following 
proclamation  by  General  Joffre,  the  French 
Commander-in-Chief,  was  being  circulated 
among  the  Alsatians  : — 

Children  of  Alsace, 

After  44  years  of  sorrowful  waiting  French 
soldiers  once  more  tread  the  soil  of  your 
noble  country.  They  are  the  pioneers  in 
the  great  work  of  revenge.  For  them  what 
emotions  it  calls  forth  and  what  pride  ! 

To  complete  the  work  they  have  made  the 
sacrifice  of  their  lives.  The  French  nation 
unanimously  urges  them  on,  and  in  the  folds 
of  their  flag  are  inscribed  the  magic  words 
"  Right  and  Liberty."  Long  hve  Alsace. 
Long  live  France. 

General-in-Chief  of  the  French  Armies, 

•TOFFRE. 


The  strategy  of  General  Joffre  in  throwing 
troops  into  Alsace  when  every  spare  man  and 
gun  was,  as  it  happened,  required  in  Belgium 
has  been — after  the  events — severely  criticized. 
But,  in- fairness  to  the  French  generalissimo,  it 
must  be  pointed  out  that  at  the  time  it  seemed 
to  experienced  critics  to  be  justified.  Mr. 
Belloc,  whose  striking  prophecy  of  what  would 
occur  if  the  Germans  invaded  Belgium  will 
be  remembered,  observed,  ten  days  or  so  after  the 
French  entered  Alsace,  that  there  had  been 
"  at  the  very  other  end  of  the  field  of  war  the 
first  signs  of  a  movement  that  was  to  have  a  pro- 
found effect  (the  future  would  show  it)  upon  all 
succeeding  operations,"  and  that,  though  the 
effect  of  "  this  raid  "  into  Alsace  was  "  political 
rather  than  strategic,"  there  was  "strategy 
behind  it." 

That  was  indeed  probable.  The  French 
Commander-in-Chief  was  no  hot-headed  general 
of  the  Murat  type.  Born  in  1852,  he  was,  like 
Lord  Kitchener,  a  student  when  the  Franco- 
Prussian  War  broke  out.  Like  Lord  Kitchener, 
he  had  been  an  engineer.  For  three  years  he 
was  occupied  on  the  new  fortifications  for  Paris. 
In  1885  he  took  part  in  the  expedition  to  For- 
mosa, and  afterwards  organized  the  defences  of 
Upper  Tonkin.  Three  years  later  he  joined  the 
engineer  staff  at  headquarters,  and  was*  em- 
ployed on  railway  work.     He  returned  to  the 


283 


y 


284 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


PANORAMIC  VIEW  OF  MULHAUSEN. 


French  colonies,  but  on  this  occasion  to  Africa, 
directing  the  construction  of  the  railway  from 
Senegal  to  the  Niger.  It  was  largely  thanks  to 
Joffre  that  Timbuctoo  was  secured  by  the  French. 
Next  he  saw  serv-ice  in  Madagascar.  Again  in 
France,  he  became  Director  of  Engineers  at 
headquarters,  and  afte  wards  he  was  in  com- 
mand of  the  6th  Infantry  Division.  From  May, 
1908,  to  February,  1910,  he  commanded  the 
Second  Army  Corps.  Finally,  he  entered  the 
Superior  C!ouncil  of  War,  and  in  1911  was 
appointed  Chief  of  the  Greneral  Staff.  As  Chief 
of  the  General  Staff,  he  had  signalized  liimself  by 
sending  into  retirement  five  commanding 
generals  whom  he  had  judged  to  be  incompe- 
tent. Quiet,  taciturn,  masterful,  he  was  the 
last  person  to  allow  purely  political  considera- 
tions to  dictate  his  strategj%  MacMahon  had 
gone  to  Sedan  because  the  politicians  at  Paris  had 
ordered  him  to.  After  Sedan  Gambetta  from  Bor- 
deaux had,  with  disastrous  results,  manoeuvred 
the  armies  which  he  had  helped  so  materially  to 
create.  But  Joffre  was  neither  a  MacMahon 
nor  a  Bourbaki.  "  I  assure  you,"  said  the 
French  Minister  of  War  at  the  opening  of  the 
struggle  to  an  English  journalist,  "  that  if  I 
were  to  take  a  motor-car  and  drive  into  the 
zone  of  operations  without  General  Joffre's 
permission  General  Joffre  would  have  me 
turned   out." 

On  Augvist  3  the  French  generalissimo  left 
Paris  for  the  frontier  behind  wliich  the  French 
covering  troops  had  been  withdrawn  some 
eight  miles   in   order   that  it  should   be   clear 


to  the  world,  and  especially  to  Italy,  that 
the  Germans,  if  they  invaded  France,  were 
unprovoked    aggressors.  * 

To  understand  the  problem  that  this  military 
scientist  was  called  upon  to  solve  it  is  necessary 
to  have  present  in  the  mind  a  picture  of  the 
frontier  open  to  attack  by  Germany.  This 
frontier  starts  from  the  point  where  three 
countries — Switzerland,  France,  Germany — 
meet,  runs  north  for  70  miles,  and  then  strikes 
north-west  for  275  miles,  finishing  on  the 
North  Sea  some  seven  miles  E.N.E.  of  Dunkirk. 
For  the  first  165  miles  France  is  bounded  by 
her  lost  provinces — Alsace-Lorraine  ;  for  four 
or  five  miles  by  the  independent  principality 
of  Luxemburg,  and  for  175  miles  by  Belgium. 
The   obsoletet   fortress   of   Longwy   stands   in 


•It  should  be  recollected  that  the  Triple  Allianc-e.  to  which  Italy 
was  a  partner,  was  an  alliance  for  defensive  and  not  for  offensive 
purposes.  The  Kaiser  and  his  diplomatists  made  a  desperate 
attempt  to  drag  Italy  into  the  war  by  pretending  that  Germany 
had  been  attacked  by  France.  On  August  3  they  issued  at  Berlin 
the  following  mendacious  statements : — "  It  has  become  known 
here  that  it  is  declared  in  France  that  Germany  began  the  w^ar  by 
invading  France  with  her  troops.  This  is  not  correct.  Yesterday 
morning,  the  2nd  inst.,  a  French  aviator  threw  bombs  over  Nurem- 
h)erK.  During  the  night  of  the  1st  inst.  French  aviators  manoeuvred 
over  the  Rhine  provinces.  Yesterday  morning,  moreover,  French 
officers  in  German  uniforms  crossed  the  frontier  from  Belgium 
into  Germany  in  motor-cars.  Later  in  the  day  French  troops 
crossed  the  frontier  near  Belfort  and  endeavoured  to  press  forward 
into  Upper  Alsace.  It  is  therefore  considered  here  that  France 
has  attacked  us  without  breaking  otf  diplomatic  relations." 
Renter's  Agency  was  also  informed  that,  "  according  to  telegrams 
received  on  August  3  in  London  from  the  Chief  of  the  German 
General  Staff,  a  party  of  French  men  and  officers  disguised  in 
Prussian  uniforms  tried  to  cross  the  German  frontier  near  the  Dutch 
boundary.  They  .were  detected  nnd  i>revented  from  crossing.  The 
German  telegram  adderl  that  a  French  rtoctor  and  two  other  French- 
men tried  to  poison  the  wells  near  Metz  with  cholera  microl)es." 
These  false  allegations  are  evidence  that  the  German  f;oveniment 
was  already  meditating  the  most  flagrant  breaches  of  International 
Law.  They,  doubtless,  wished  to  be  able  to  plead  justification  for 
the  barbarities  about  to  be  perpetrated  by  their  Huns ! 

tDeipite  its  antiquated  defences  Longwy  held  out  for  three 
weeks  and  more  against  the  German  invaders. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


285 


the  pocket  formed  by  the  frontiers  of  Belgium, 
Luxemburg,  and  Germany. 

The  geographical,  as  opposed  to  the  strategic, 
frontier  ran  from  the  eastern  environs  of 
Belfort,  mostly  along  the  crest  of  the  Vosges, 
to  the  Donon,  a  peak  a  little  to  the  south  of 
a  straight  line  connecting  Nancy  and  Strass- 
burg.  Thence  it  turned  westward  along  the 
edge  of  Lorraine  until,  abreast  of  Metz,  it 
struck  north  and  touched,  a  few  miles  to  the 
east  of  Longwy,  the  frontier  of  Luxemburg. 
The  formidable  German  ring-fortress  of  Metz  is  in 
the  same  longitude  as  Nancy.  The  rest  of  the 
frontier  need  not  be  described  for  our  purpose. 

Between  Longwy  and  the  spurs  of  Mt.  Donon 
the  country  is  what  is  called  "  rolling."  Some 
miles  to  the  south-west  of  Metz  the  Moselle 
enters  German  territory  and  proceeds  north- 
wards through  the  capital  of  Lorraine  and 
the  fortress  of  Thionville  (to  the  south-east  of 
Longwy)  by  Treves — the  centre  from  which 
the  Germans  had  marched,  motored,  or  trained 
on  Luxemburg — to  Coblentz,  where  it  joins  the 
Rhine.  At  the  head -waters  of  the  Moselle  was 
the  French  ring-fortress  Epinal,  and  mid- 
way between  Epinal  and  Metz,  10  miles  or 
so  to  the  west  of  Nancy,  another,  Toul. 

From  the  Donon  (3,310ft.),  a  peak  250ft. 
lower  than  Snowdon,  the  range  of  the  Vosges 
falls  and  rises    to    the    Ballon   de    Soultz,  the 


highest  point  of  the  Vosges,  4,670ft.  in  altitude 
and  some  260ft.  higher  than  Ben  Nevis,  the 
loftiest  point  in  the  British  Isles.  To  the 
South-west  of  the  Ballon  de  Soultz  was  the 
Ballon  d' Alsace  (4,085ft.). 

The  Vosges  is  a  precipitous  range,  more 
abrupt  on  the  German  than  on  the  French  side  ; 
its  lower  flanks  and  crest  are  mostly  wooded. 
Several  carriage  roads  cross  the  Vosges  and 
light  railways  ascend  German  and  French 
valleys  leading  to  the  crest  of  the  mountains. 
North  of  the  Donon  the  line  frcm  Nanoy  and 
Luneville  to  Strassburg  traversed  Saarburg  and 
the  Zabern  tunnel,  both  of  which  were  in 
German  territory.  South  of  the  Ballon  d' Alsace 
a  railway  connected  Belfort  with  Miilhausen. 

Belfort,  the  base  for  the  French  operations  in 
Alsace,  lies  15  miles  or  so  south  of  the  Ballon 
d' Alsace.  This  ring-fortress,  with  the  forts  round 
Montbelliard  to  the  south  of  it,  blosked  the 
depression  between  the  Swiss  Jiira  and  the  Vosges, 
known  as  the  Trouee  de  Belfort.  The  lie  of  the 
land  here  is  apparent  from  the  fact  that  the 
Rhone-Rhine  Canal  passes  through  the  gap  of 
Belfort. 

Captured  by  the  French  in  1636,  ceded  to 
them  in  1648,  and  successfully  defended  by  its 
garrison  in  1814,  1815,  and  1870-1,  Belfort  is, 
as  it  were,  the  lock  of  the  southern  gate  between 
France  and  Germany.     The  Germans  must  have 


ALTKIRCH,    LOOKING   TOWARDS    SAINT   MORAIN. 
Where  veiy  severe  fighting  took  place  at  the  beginning  of  the  War. 


'> 


286 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


regretted  that  it  was  not  transferred  to  them  at 
the  end  of  the  Franco-German  War.  With  Bel- 
fort  in  their  possession  they  might  have  marched 
on  Paris  by  the  plateau  of  Langres  (they  would, 
however,  have  had  to  meisk  or  capture  the  ring- 
fortress  of  Langres)  or  on  Lyons  by  the  valley  of 
the  Saone.  As  it  was,  the  French  could  open  the 
gate  at  Belf  ort  and  move  with  ease  into  the  plain 
of  Upper  Alsace  and,  also,  to  the  banks  of  the 
Rhine,  which  at  Basel  passes  between  the  Jura 
and  the  Black  Forest  and  sweeps  northwards  to 
the  strongly  fortified  Strassburg.  On  the  left 
(west)  bank  of  the  Rhine  from  Basel  to  Strass- 
burg, however,  stood  the  fortress  of  Neu 
Breisach,  through  which  Bavarian  and  Avistrian 
troops — if  Austrian  corps  were  detached  to  the 
French  theatre  of  war — could  be  povired  on  the 
flank  of  an  army  advancing  from  Belfort  in  the 
direction  of  Strassburg. 

,  Provided  that  the  French  did  not  violate  the 
neutrality  of  Belgivun  and  Luxemburg,  the 
obvious  avenue  into  Germany  lay  through  Bel- 
fort.  To  protect  France  from -a  German  offen- 
sive on  the  Alsace-Lorraine  frontier,  a  chain  of 
forts  ran  from  Belfort  to  Epinal.  Between 
Epinal  and  Toul  a  gap — the  gap  of  Nancy — 
had  been  intentionally  left  unprotected  by 
fortresses.     It   was   hoped  that   the   Germans, 


with  their  habitual  contempt  for  their  neigh- 
bours, might  traverse  the  gap  and  expose  their 
flanks  to  French  armies  pivoting  respectively 
on  Toul  and  Epinal.  To  the  east  of  the  Nancy 
gap  and  guarding  the  approaches  to  Luneville 
was  the  Fort  de  Manonviller. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  Upper  Moselle  was 
French,  the  Lower  Moselle  German.  The  Mouse, 
on  the  other  hand,  rose  in  France  and,  until  it 
entered  Belgium  at  Givet,  ran  through  French 
territory.  A  few  miles  to  the  west  of  Toul  it 
approaiched  the  Moselle  and  then  tvirned  north- 
westwards to  Verdun.  Another  chain  of  forts 
stretched  from  Toul  to  Verdun.  One  of  them, 
St.  Mihiel,  played  later  an  important  part 
during  the  attempts  of  the  Germans  to  burst 
through  this  barrier.  Verdun,  the  most  northern 
of  the  ring-fortresses  on  the  eastern  frontier, 
faced  Metz.  It  blocked  a  German  advance  on 
Reims  or  Chalons. 

So  far,  then,  as  engineers  could  make  it,  the 
French  hne  of  defence  from  Verdun  to  Belfort 
was  a  strong  one.  But  wovild  the  fortifications 
along  it  be  able  to  resist  howitzers — and  the 
super-howitzers  which  a  cunning  and  secretive 
enemy  might  bring  against  the  fortresses  ? 
The  Germans  had  predicted  that,  if  a  sector  of 
a    ring-fortress  were    attacked  by  brave    and 


A  TRAIN   OF  WOUNDED  AT  NANCY. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


287 


VIEW  OF  NANCY  FROM  THE  HOTEL  DE  VILLE. 


determined  troops  under  cover  of  the  fire  of 
modern  artillery,  the  fortress  would  certainly 
fall.  The  reckless  indifference  to  human  life 
which  was  a  feature  of  HohenzoUern  statecraft 
pointed  to  the  probability  that  the  Prussian 
generals  would  sacrifice  their  men  by  tens  of 
thousands  to  capture  the  ring-fortresses  or 
links  in  the  chain  of  fortifications  between 
Verdim  and  Toul,  between  Epinal  and  Belfort. 

There  was  another  factor  to  be  considered. 
The  German  Government  had  reduced  treachery 
to  a  fine  art,  and  the  successors  of  Stieber  had 
honeycombed  France  with  spies  and  traitors. 
Treason  might  effect  what  howitzers  could  not, 
and,  until  war  had  shown  that  France  was  united 
to  a  man  against  Germany,  it  would  be  perilous 
to  rely  on  a  passive  defensive.  Of  recent  years 
there  had  been  a  rapid  growth  of,  apparently, 
anti-patriotic  Socialism,  and  the  ferment  aroused 
by  the  murder  of  M.  Calmette  in  the  spring  of 
1914  seemed  to  point  to  the  possibility  of  a 
foreign  war  being  accompanied  by  civil  dis- 
turbances. The  successes  of  the  Prussians  in 
1870  had  been  largely  due  both  to  treachery  and 
to  domestic  dissensions.  A  victorious  advance 
on  to  hostile  territory  woiild  cement  the  nation, 
and  against  a  nation  boiling  over  with  enthu- 
siasm the  German  advance  guard  of  spies  and 
desperadoes  would  be  able  to  effect  little. 
Every  Frenchman  would  then  be  an  eager 
detective. 


There  were  still  more  powerful  reasons  why 
General  Joffre  should  throw  troops  into  Alsace 
and  Lorraine.  The  majority  of  the  inhabitants 
of  those  provinces  were  French  at  heart,  if 
German  by  nationality.  Whatever  their  re- 
mote racial  origin  may  have  been  the  Lorrainers 
and  Alsatians  had  not  taken  kindly  to  the  strait- 
waistcoat  of  German  Imperialism.  The  Kaiser 
and  his  agents  by  cajolery  and  threats  had  en- 
deavoured to  persuade  them  that 'they  were 
mad  to  prefer  the  French  language,  literature, 
customs,  and  habits.  Like  the  Poles,  the 
Alsatians  and  Lorrainers  persisted  in  their 
resistance  to  German  "  Culture."  Unlike  the 
Poles,  they  had  still  a  fatherland  to  which  they 
could  appeal  for  aid  and  sympathy. 

The  year  before  the  Great  War  the  ever- 
smouldering  hostility  of  the  population  had  been 
fanned  into  a  flame  by  a  typical  example  of  the 
brutal  conduct  always  to  be  expected  from  their 
German  oppressors.  At  Zabern  in  Alsace  a 
Lieutenant  von  Forstner  was  reported  to  have 
promised  to  reward  a  recrmt  if  he  stabbed  a 
"  Wacke."  This  term  was  a  local  and  oppro- 
bious  expression  for  a  native  of  Alsace.  Dis- 
turbances arose  and,  in  the  course  of  them. 
Von  Forstner  drew  his  sword  and  cut  a  lame 
cobbler  over  the  head.  The  military  superseded 
the  civil  authorities  and  their  action  was  sup- 
ported by  the  Prussian  Minister  of  War,  General 
von  Falkenhayn,  who  declared  in  the  Reichstag 


288 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAH. 


COLONEL   VON  REUTER, 
who  supported  Von  Forstner. 

[Daily  Mirror. 

that  "  if  the  military  authorities  had  given  way, 
there  might  have  been  momentary  peace  in 
Zabern,  but  it  would  have  been  a  treacherous 
peace.  .  .  .  The  recent  scandals,"  he  con- 
tinued, "  cried  to  Heaven,  and  unless  the  autho- 
rities could  suppress  the  agitation  with  vigoixr 
they  must  be  prepared  to  see  life  for  a  German 
at  Zabern  become  less  safe  than  life  in  the 
Congo." 

It  was  the  lame  cobbler,  however,  not  the 
soldier  whose  head  had  been  cut,  and  the  Reichs- 
tag, for  once  showing  some  independence,  cen- 
sured the  Imperial  Chancellor  by  a  heavy 
majority.  Further,  the  Military  Cotirt  of  the 
30th  Division  at  Strassburg  sentenced  the 
lieutenant  to  43  days'  imprisonment. 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  the  conduct  of  the 
Reichstag  and  the  Military  Court  was  violently 
attacked  by  the  German  militarists.  The 
Police  President  of  Berlin,  Herr  von  Jagow,  in 
a  letter  to  the  papers,  described  Alsace-Lorraine 
as  "  almost  an  enemy's  covintry."  The  superior 
Military  Court  of  the  Strassbvirg  Army  Corps 
reversed  the  sentence  passed  on  Lieutenant  von 


Forstner  and  the  Military  Court  of  the  30th 
Division  acquitted  Colonel  von  Renter  and 
Lieutenant  Schad,  who,  between  them,  had  sub- 
stituted the  rule  of  the  sword  for  the  rule  of  law 
in  Zabern.  Colonel  von  Renter  had  pleaded  a 
Cabinet  Order  of  Frederick  William  III.,  issued 
in  1820,  which  had  been  reprinted  and  cotrnter- 
signed  by  the  Minister  of  War  15  years  before 
the  Zabern  incident.  During  these  pro- 
ceedings the  Crown  Prince  by  telegram  had 
signified  his  approval  of  the  tyrannous  and 
illegal  behaviour  of  his  father's  Janizaries. 

With    the    Zabern    outrages    fresh    in    their 
memories  the  Alsatians  and  Lorrainers  would 
surely  flock  to  the  tricolour  if  it  crossed  the 
frontier  !     As   Alsace   and   Lorraine   were   the 
immediate  bases  for  a  direct  invasion  of  France 
by  the  Germans,  to  raise  Alsace  and  Lorraine 
was    one   way   of   preventing   or   hindering   a 
German    offensive.     That    the    whole    of    the 
vast   German   forces  (which   might,  moreover, 
since    the    Russian    mobilization    was    slower 
than  that  of  the  Teutonic  Allies,  be  reinforced 
by  one  or  more  Austrian  corps)  would  traverse 
only  Luxemburg  and  Belgium  was  improbable. 
"It  is  Well  known,"  runs  an  official  French 
communique  published  on  the  15th  of  August, 
"  by  the  declarations  made  by  Germans  them- 
selves, such  as  Generals  Bernhardi  and  Falken- 
hayn.   Marshal   von    der    Goltz,    and    others, 
that  the   German  plan   consisted  in  the   first 
place  in  an  abrupt  attack  upon  the  French 
covering  troops  near  Nancy.     It  is  also  known 
that  a  second  abrupt  attack  was  to  take  place 
in  Belgium-  with  an  immediate  march  on  the 
French  frontier.     A  decisive  proof  of  the  reality 
of  this  double  plan  is  revealed  by  the  fact  that 
a  number  of  Germans  who  should  have  joined 
the  colours  on  the  fifth  to  the  fifteenth  day  of 
the  mobilization  had  received  orders   to  join 
their    regiments    in    French    towns,    such    as 
Verdun,    Reims,  Chalons,    and   other  places." 
Lastly,     the     French     nature     needed     and 
demanded  a  movement  such  as  the  invasion 
of   Alsace.     The  last   war   with   the   Germans 
had  been  attended  by  a  succession  of  disastrous 
defeats.     For  over  40  years  the  Germans  by 
speech,   gesture,   and   writing   had   done   their 
utmost   to   impress   on   the   French   that   the 
German  Army  was  incomparably  superior  to 
their  French  neighboiir's,  and  that  the  German 
soldier  was  a  better  man  than  the  French  soldier 
on  the  field  of  battle.     The  reverses  in  1870-1 
had  destroyed  the  prestige  of  the  French  Army. 
Japan  and  Turkey — ^to   take  two   examples — 
had  sent  for  German  instructors  in  the  art  of 
war.      The  Anglo-Saxon  world,   too,   had,  for 
a  period,  been  inclined  to  revere  the  German 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


289 


strategists  and  tacticians.  Recently,  indeed, 
the  Christian  Balkan  States  had  turned  towards 
Paris  as  the  military  centre  of  the  civilized 
world,  but  even  the  King  of  the  Hellenes  had 
seemed  to  acknowledge  that  he  and  his  king- 
dom were  in  greater  debt  to  Grerman  strategists 
than  to  the  French  instructors  of  the  Greek 
Army.  At  the  earliest  moment  to  remove 
the  burden  of  the  memory  of  past  defeats 
from  the  shoulders  of  the  French  nation  and  to 
prove  that  the  leaders  who  in  1870  made  the 
French  fight  on  the  defensive  had  utterly  mis- 
understood the  national  temperament,  may  well 
have  been  the  main  motive  at  the  back  of 
General  Joffre's  mind  when  he  ordered  or  sanc- 
tioned the  invasion  of  Upper  Alsace. 

"  We  knew,"  said  a  communique  of  August 
22,  "  from  the  reconnaissances  of  our  aviators 
that  the  Germans  had  left  relatively  unim- 
portant forces  between  the  French  frontier  and 
Miilhausen,  and  that  the  bulk  of  their  forces 
had  fallen  back  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Rhine. 
This  being  the  case,  our  objective  was  to 
attack  those  forces  and  throw  them  back, 
in  order  to  gain  command  of  the  Rhine  bridges 


and  to  be  able  to  repulse  a  counter-attack 
there,  should  the  enemy  make  one." 

There  was  an  excellent  chance  of  routing  the 
hated  enemy  in  the  first  days  of  the  war,  of 
releasing  the  French  in  Alsace  from  bondage,  of 
disturbing  the  plans  of  the  Kaiser  and  his 
son,  of  threatening  the  flank  of  a  German  Army 
advancing  towards  the  gap  of  Nancy,  and  also, 
perhaps,  of  firing  mines  of  disaffection  in 
Southern  Germany.  Becker  in  1840  had  written, 
addressing  the  French  : — 

"  Sie   sollen   ihn   nicht   haben 

Den   freien  Deutschen  Rhein  :  " 

and  De  Musset  had  replied  : — 

"  Nous  I'avons  eu,  votre  Rhin  AUemand." 

For  French  troops  once  more  to  bivouac  on 
the  banks  of  the  mighty  river  which  their  great 
grandfathers  had  so  often  crossed  ixnder  Napo- 
leon would  be  the  happiest  of  auguries  for  France 
in  the  gigantic  struggle  which  had  just  opened. 

As  already  mentioned,  the  campaign  began 
with  the  capture  of  Altkirch  on  August  7. 
Previously  to  this,  and  even  before  the  declara- 
tion of  war,  the  Germans  had  at  various  points 


RETURN  OF  COLONEL  VON  REUTER'S  NOTORIOUS  REGIMENT  TO  ZABERN. 


290 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


LIEUTENANT  VON  FORSTNER  of  ALSACE, 
who  cut  the  head  of  a  cripple  at  Zabem. 

[Daily  Mirror, 

crossed  the  French  frontier  and  a  German  air- 
mem  h«id  dropped  bombs  on  Lvineville.  The 
French  troops  were  divided  into  two  coliimns ; 
their  objective  was  Miilhausen.  One  advanced 
through  the  gap  of  Belfort  on  Altkirch,  the 
other  crossed  the  Vosges  near  the  Rheinkopf 
(4,260ft.),  a  Uttle  to  the  N.W.  of  the  Ballon 
de  Soultz,  descending  by  the  valley  of  the 
Thur  on  Thann.  Miilhausen  is  at  the  apex  of  a 
triangle,  of  which  the  base  is  a  line  drawn 
between  Thann  and  Altkirch, 

The  wings  of  the  German  forces  were  posted  at 
Thann  and  Altkirch ;  between  Miilhausen  and 
the  Rhine  lay  the  Forest  of  Hard,  20  miles  in 
length,  "  where  a  whole  Army  Corps  could  take 
shelter."*  The  first  operation  of  the  French 
was  to  dislodge  the  Germans  from  Thann  and 
Altkirch. 

Thann,  12  miles  from  Miilhausen,  was  a  town 
of  less  than  10.000  inhabitants.  It  lay  at  the 
mouth  of  the  valley  of  the  Thur.  The  motin- 
tains  between  which  the  river  flowed  were 
covered  with  woods  on  their  upper  and  vine- 
yards on  their  lower  slopes.  The  town  was  in- 
teresting from  both  an  antiquarian  and  a 
modern  standpoint.  The  Church  of  St.  Theo- 
bald was  a  gem  of  Gothic  architecture,  and  on 
the  left  bank  of  the  Thur  rose  the  Engelburg, 
a  castle  which  commanded  the  town  and  entrance 
to  the  valley.     The  tower  of  the  castle  had  been 

♦French  eommimiaui. 


destroyed  by  Turenne  in  1674.  Thann  in  1914 
was  a  small  manufacturing  town.  It  contained 
machinery,  cotton  and  silk  factories.  The 
Germans  had  placed  artillery  behind  earthworks 
at  Thann  and  at  the  smaller  town  of  Altkirch, 
situated  in  an  amphitheatre  on  the  right  bank 
of  the  111. 

Despite  the  fact  that  the  Germans  were 
entrenched  and  in  approximately  equal  niimbers 
the  French  carried  both  positions.  The  Ger- 
man losses  were  considerable.  The  next  day 
(August  8)  the  French  pushed  forward  to  Miil- 
hausen, which,  amid  the  acclamations  of  the  in- 
habitants, they  entered  at  m"ghtfall.  Miil- 
hausen, on  the  Rhine-Rhone  canal,  with  a  popu- 
lation of  some  100,000  inhabitants,  was  the  most 
important  manufacturing  centre  in  Alsace,  and 
the  seat  of  government  for  the  district.  It  had 
been  a  free  city  of  the  old  German  Empire,  and 
from  1515  to  1798  it  had  been  in  alliance  with 
the  Swiss  Confederation.  Numerous  monu- 
ments attested  its  ancient  importance,  while  the 
Arbeiterstadt — the  Port  Sunlight  of  Alsace — 
founded  in  1853,  was  one  of  the  eewhest 
examples  of  a  town  built  expressly  for  the 
benefit  of  the  working-classes. 

It  was  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  Germans 
wovild  tamely  acquiesce  in  the  loss  of  this  im- 
portant place.  The  14th  Army  Corps  (recruited 
from  Baden) — or  a  considerable  portion  of  it — 
on  the  night  of  the  next  day  (August  9)  attacked 
the  French  from  two  directions,  viz.,  through 
the  Forest  of  Hard  and  from  Colmar  and  Neu 
Breisach.  The  French  communications  which 
passed  through  Theuin  were  struck  at  by  the 
Germans  at  Cemay  on  the  Thur.  "  In  remain- 
ing at  Miilhausen  with  insufficient  forces," 
says  the  French  official  communique,  "  we  risked 
losing  our  fine  of  retreat  on  the  Upper  Vosges 
and  Belfort."  It  is  possible,  but  not  probable, 
that  the  Germans  had  permitted  the  French 
to  enter  Miilhausen  with  a  view  to  dis- 
covering, through  spies  left  behind,  the  names 
of  the  disaffected  inhabitants.  The  alterna- 
tive of  delivering  a  counter-attack  with  the 
reserves  at  Altkirch,  which  was  not  imme- 
diately threatened  by  the  Germans,  did  not 
meet  with  the  approval  of  the  French  com- 
mander. "  To  retreat,"  again  to  quote  from 
the  French  communique,  "  was  the  wisest  course 
in  the  circiimstances.  After  this  affair  we  were 
certain  that  the  Germans  did  not  intend  to 
abandon  Upper  Alsace  without  fighting,  and  had 
strong  forces  there  at  their  disposal." 

This  raid — it  W8is  little  more  than  a  raid — 
had  confirmed  the  reports  of  the  French  aviators 
that  the  Germans  had  left  relatively  unim- 
portant forces  between  the  French  frontier  and 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


291 


Miilhausen.  A  small  body  of  French  troops  had 
immobilized  in  Upper  Alsace  a  much  larger 
body  of  Germans  ;  the  superiority  of  the  French 
field  artillery  had  been  demonstrated ;  the 
French  infantry  had  exhibited  the  elan  for 
which  it  had  been  so  celebrated  in  the  past  ;  and 
the  Alsatians  had  been  encouraged  to  expect 
a  speedy  deliverance  from  the  yoke  of  their 
German  tyrants. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  French  had  had  to 
evacuate  Miilhausen,  which  paid  dearly  to  the 
Germans  for  its  burst  of  enthusiasm,  and  it  had 
been  discovered  that  the  ravines  through  which 
the  French  must  debouch  from  the  Vosges  into 
the  plain  were  commanded  by  German  howitzers 
firing  from  skilfully  concealed  positions. 

Writing  10  days  later,  a  soldier  in  the  French 
ranks  gave  his  impressions — probably  the  im- 
pressions of  the  average  French  soldier — of  the 
results  achieved  by  these  combats.  His  letter, 
allowing  for  pardonable  exaggeration,  brings 
vividly  before  us  the  natvire  of  a  modem 
battle. 

"  Already  after  a  fortnight's  war  eye- 
witnesses can  state  definitely  that  the  first 
operations  in  Alsace  clearly  prove  two  things 
— the  indisputable  superiority  of  oxa  artillery 
and  the  qualities  of  our  infantry  in  attack. 
On  August  9  we  were  at  Riedisheim  after 
having  entered  Miilhausen.  One  of  our  divi- 
sions was  attacked  by  a  superior  force  and  we 
had  to  withdraw.  Prudence  dictated  this  with- 


drawal, which  was  in  no  way  disturbed  by  the 
enemy,  so  greatly  had  he  been  demoraUzed  by 
the  damage  wrought  by  our  field  artillery, 
which  was  using  melinite  shells  with  terrible 
effect.  From  afar  off  we  could  clearly  see 
whole  sections  of  the  enemy  wiped  out  by  our 
accurate  fire.  When  a  shell  fell  near  a 
German  half-company  it  was  annihilated. 
After  a  few  seconds  one  saw  two  or  three  men 
get  up  and  flee,  the  rest  remained.  It  was  a 
complete  destruction.  Our  batteries  of  four 
guns  do  the  work  of  four  or  six  gun  batteries  of 
the  enemy.  Our  fire  is  quicker,  and  we  can 
direct  a  hail  of  shells  from  a  given  spot  in  a 
very  short  space  of  time.  Our  gun-carriage 
does  not  move  dviring  fire.  Only  a  very  slight 
and  a  quickly  executed  adjustment  is  re- 
quired before  the  next  shell  goes.  The  Ger- 
mans find  that  their  gvms  shift  after  each  shot. 
In  addition  to  the  rapidity  of  our  fire,  our  shells 
are  extremely  powerful. 

"  On  August  13  the  109th  Infantry  Regiment 
of  the  enemy  advanced  upon  positions  occu- 
pied by  VIS  between  Breche-au-Mont  and 
Vauthiermont.  Suddenly  ovu  guns  were 
heard,  and  a  panic  followed  in  the  Baden  ranks. 
Our  immediate  success  was  due  to  our  artil- 
lery. I  saw  the  battlefield  and  the  damage 
done  was  awful.  Our  artillery  compare  the 
effect  of  the  bursting  of  oior  melinite  shells 
with  that  of  a  gigantic  blow  with  an  axe. 
This  is  quite  exact.     The  impression  one  has 


THE   CITADEL  AT   BELFORT. 
Showing  the  huge  carved  Lion  which  faces  Germany. 


292 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


CAPTURED    GERMAN    GUNS    IN    BELFORT. 


is  that  a  giant  has  struck  everywhere  with 
some  Titanic  axe.  Those  who  are  hit  directly 
are  pulverized,  others  are  killed  by  the  shock 
of  the  explosion.  Their  convulsed  faces  are 
blackened  with  the  powder  of  the  enemy.  At 
Breche-au-Mont  they  fled  in  such  panic  that 
the  infantry  we  sent  in  pursuit  was  unable  to 
catch  them  up. 

"  Letters  written  by  the  enemy  were  seized 
in  villages  occupied  by  our  troops.  They  all 
bear  testimony  to  the  havoc  and  panic 
wrought  by  our  guns.  One  of  these  letters, 
written  by  an  officer  to  his  wife,  states  that 
such  carnage  is  iinimaginable." 

The  second  paragraph  in  the  above  letter 
anticipates  the  narrative  of  events.  On  August 
9  the  French  had  retired  from  Miilhausen,  but 
General  Joffre  decided  that  the  raid  should  be 
followed  by  an  invasion  of  Alsace.  The  forts  at 
Liege  were  holding  out ;  the  defences  at  Namur 
Were  supposed  to  be  as  strong  as,  or  stronger, 
than  those  of  Liege ;  a  German  offensive 
from  Lorraine  and  Alsace  into  the  Nancy  gap 
between  Toul  and  Epinal  would  be  dangerous 
and  difficult  if  the  French  secured  Upper  Alsace. 
Should,  too,  the  French  succeed  in  establishing 
themselves  round  the  Donon  they  might  cut  the 
communications  between  Metz  and  Strassburg, 
and  perhaps  divert  a  portion  of  the  enemy's 
forces  seeking  to  break  through  the  French 
lines  (which  were  not  protected  by  permanent 
fortifications)  between  Verdun  and  Sedan. 
Moreover,  there  was  the  feeling  of  the  Alsatians 


and  Lorrainers  to  be  considered.  They  would 
be  bitterly  disappointed  if  the  French  remained 
on  the  defensive.  Many  Alsatians  had  com- 
promised themselves  irretrievably,  and  the 
suspicious  and  savage  rulers  of  the  two  pro- 
vinces had  already  shown  in  Belgium  that  they 
would  not  hesitate  to  overawe  the  population 
by  making  the  most  terrifying  examples. 

General  Pau,  a  veteran  of  the  Franco -Prussian 
War,  was  entrusted  with  the  direction  of  the 
invading  army.  Like  Nelson,  he  had  lost  an 
arm.  His  capacities  were  such  that  he  heid  been 
a  candidate  for  the  post  held  by  General  Joffre 
himself.  "  It  was  a  question  this  time,"  says 
the  French  communique,  "  of  a  decisive  effort 
and  not  of  a  mere  reconnaissance." 

At  first  the  French  had  everything  their  own 
way.  They  moved  through  Thann  and  Danne- 
marie,  which  lies  between  Belfort  and  Altkirch, 
on  Miilhausen.  Both  places  were  stormed. 
Miilhausen  was  the  next  to  fall.  It  wa? 
attacked  by  both  the  French  left  from  the 
direction  of  Thann,  and  by  the  French  right, 
which  had  been  pushed  towards  the  Rhine-Rhone 
canal.  The  fighting  at  Miilhausen  began  in  the 
suburb  of  Dornach.  No  fewer  than  24  German 
guns  were  captured,  and  the  city,  after  a  brief 
resistance,  was  once  more  in  the  possession  of 
the  French  (August  19-20). 

From  Miilhausen  the  bulk  of  the  invading 
troops  at  this  point  of  the  theatre  of  war  were 
directed  southward  to  Altkirch,  which  had 
been  abandoned  by  the  French  at  the  conclusion 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAE. 


293 


of  the  raid.  The  Germans,  •  afraid  of 
being  cut-  off  from  the  Rhine  bridges, 
retreated  in  great  confusion.  The  western 
ends  of  the  bridges  fell  into  the  hands  of  the 
French  and  the  upper  part  of  Upper  Alsace 
was  evacuated  by  the  Germans.  Their  line  of 
battle,  which  stretched  from  Liege  to  Basel,  had 
been  turned  and  General  Pau  was  in  a  position 
to  move  up  the  plain  between  the  Vosges  and 
the  Rhine  to  Colmar  and  Neu  Breisach — a 
fortress  to  the  east  of  Colmar  protecting  one 
of  the  main  crossings  of  the  Rhine. 

While  these  events  were  taking  place  the 
French  were  swarming  across  the  Vosges  by 
the  passes  between  the  Ballon  d' Alsace  and 
the  Donon,  thus  threatening  the  communi- 
cations of  the  Germans  between  Colmar  and 
Strassburg.  The  pass  of  Saales,  south  of  the 
Donon,  was  seized.  Counter-offensive  moves 
of  the  Germans  from  the  direction  of  Metz 
towards  Spincourt  (north-east  of  Verdun)  and 
La  Garde  and  Blamont  (to  the  east  of  Luneville 
and  Nancy)  had  been  unsuccessful.  On  August 
15  the  French  Staff  was  able  to  inform  the  public 
that  "  the  German  attack  byjway  of  Nancy  had 
scarcely  been  attempted "  and  that  "  the 
Germans  had  been  forced  to  desist  by  the 
French  covering  troops.  As  to  the  abrupt 
attack  through  Belgium,"  they  added  with  undue 
assurance,  "  that  had  had  no  better  fate. 
The  resistance  of  the  Liege  forts,  the  valour 
of  the  Belgian  Army,  and  the  action  of  the 
French  cavalry  had  had  the  result  that  the 
German  plan  had  been  foiled." 

The  advantages,  small  though  they  were, 
gained  in  Alsace  had  destroyed  the  legend  of 
German  invincibility.  The  French,  who  had 
entered  on  the  war  with  grim  determination, 
felt  their  spirits  rise.  The  memories  of  the 
Revolutionary  and  Napoleonic  Wars — of  Valmy, 
Rivoli,  Austerlitz,  Jena,  Auerstadt,  Eckmiihl, 
Wagram,  Liitzen,  Bautzen,  Dresden,  Mont- 
mirail,  Ligny,  Magenta,  and  Solferino — revived 
within  them.  It  may  have  seemed  a  good  omen 
to  them  that  the  Germans  had  felt  constrained 
to  call  Austrian  troops  to  Alsace.  The  name  of 
Austria  was  associated  with  innumerable 
victories  in  the  mind  of  France  ! 

To  illustrate  the  confidence  felt  at  French 
headquarters  we  quote  the  concluding  para- 
graphs of  the  communique  of  August  15.  issued 
before  the  recaptiire  of  Miilhausen  : — 

"  The  French  mobilization  and  concentra- 
tion have  been  carried  out  with  perfect 
regularity.  The  men  have  been  carried  to 
their  depots  without  incident  and  armed 
and   equipped    with   a   minimum   of   delay. 


The  concentration  has  been  effected  in  con- 
ditions just  as  satisfactory.  The  fears  often 
and  legitimately  expressed  of  the  disorganiza- 
tion likely  to  result  to  the  French  concentra- 
tion by  the  German  invasion  have,  happily, 
been  set  definitely  at  rest. 

"  Again,  there  has  been  a  co-ordination  of 
movement  between  the  allied  arnxies.  The 
Belgian  Army  has  brilliantly  played  its 
part.  The  Russian  Army  is  accelerating  its 
mobilization,  and  it  can  now  operate  with 
the  French  and  Belgian  armies.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Servian  Army,  which  is  now 
mistress  of  Herzegovina,  has  made  Austria 
hesitate  to  send  more  troops  to  Upper  Alsace, 
as  she  has  been  doing  for  a  week  past.  The 
last  and  not  the  least  factor  is  the  domina- 
tion of  the  sea.  English  and  French  squadrons 
have  been  able  to  assiire  the  perfect  security 
of  the  sea  for  the  transport  of  troops  from 
Africa  to  France.  The  two  German  cruisers 
are  out  of  the  running,  and  the  revictualling 
of   the   belligerent   allies   of   France   and   of 


THE  FAMOUS  MILITARY  MONUMENT 
AT  BELFORT. 

Erected  in  commemoration  of  the  three  sieges 
of  the  town. 


> 


294 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


A   TYPICAL   VIEW   IN    THE   VOSGES. 
Difficult  country  so  ably  captured  by   the  French. 


France  herself  is  certain  and  easy.  Such 
are  the  indisputable  results  attained  at  the 
present  hoixr.  They  are  of  capital  import- 
ance, and  are  an  augury  of  success  for  the 
combined  operations  .  of  the  allied  armies 
against  the  invaders." 

Such  was  the  situation  as  it  appeared  to  the 
military  authorities  of  France  on  August  15. 
Events  were  to  prove  that  they  were  deceived 
and  that  the  people  of  Peiris  who,  on  August 
11,  had  removed  all  signs  of  mourning  from 
the  statue  of  Strassburg  had  acted  prematurely.  * 
For  a  few  days  more,  however,  success  crowned 
the  French  invasion  of  Alsace  and  the  outskirts 
of  Lorraine.  As  has  been  mentioned,  the 
French  from  the  crest  of  the  Vosges  dominated 
the  plain  of  Alsace. 

Though  at  the  opening  of  the  Great  War 
they  had  abandoned  the  summits  of  the  Vosges, 
which  had  been  at  once  occupied  by  the  Ger- 


*A  brief  report  in  The  Times  of  this  patriotic  outburst  will  inteiest 
the  reader.  "  The  occupation  of  Altklrch  by  French  troops  prompted 
the  Alsatians  of  Paris  to  march  in  pilgrimage  to  the  statue  of 
Strassburg  on  the  Place  de  la  Concorde.  The  procession  was 
led  by  a  number  of  Al.satian  women  in  Alsatian  costume,  carrying 
palm  branches.  Behind  them  came  the  standards  of  the  Alsatian 
Federation  and  the  Belgian  flag.  These  weie  followed  by  the 
Alsatians,  who  marched  baieheaded,  led  by  their  president.  Ladders 
having  been  placed  against  the  pede&tal  of  the  monument,  an 
Alsatian  mounted  and  wound  a  broad  tricolour  sash  around  the 
statue.  The  crowd  below  shouted  '  Away  with  the  crfipe ! '  and 
in  an  instant  all  the  signs  of  mourning  that  had  surrounded  the 
statue  since  1871  were  torn  away.  Each  Alsatian  secured  a  shred 
of  the  ci6pe.  After  a  patriotic  speech  by  the  president  of  the 
association  the  '  MaiseiUaise '  was  sung  and  the  pilgrimage  dis- 
peisecU" 


mans,  they  had,  commencing  from  the  south, 
captured  one  by  one  the  principal  passes 
and  positions.  First  the  Ballon  d' Alsace 
(Welsche  Belchen)  and  the  Col  de  Bussang 
had  been  taken  ;  next  the  Hohneck  and  the 
Schlucht.  These  had  been  easy  achievements. 
On  the  French  side  the  mountains  sloped  gradu- 
ally to  the  plain.  In  the  central  sector  of  the 
Vosges  the  difficulties  encountered  had  been  very 
serious.  The  approaches  to  the  crest  were 
steep  and  the  Germans  had  entrenched  them- 
selves, while  the  valleys  leading  to  the  plain  of 
Alsace  were  defended  by  field  fortifications  and 
heavy  artillery.  The  svimmits  here  were  narrow 
and  wooded  and  the  French  could  not  instal 
their  artillery  when  they  had  captured  theba. 
In  securing  the  Cols  du  Bonhomme  and  St.  Marie 
aux  Mines  they  had  lost  600  killed  or  woimded. 
The  Col  d'Urbeis  and  the  Col  de  Saales  (to  the 
north)  had  offered  less  obstacles  to  the  invader, 
and  they  and  the  Donon  had  been  gained  at  a 
comparatively  trifling  loss. 

The  French,  too,  were  in  strong  force  at  Avri- 
court,  on  the  railway  from  Luneville  to  Zabem, 
andj  so  far  from  the  Germans  penetrating  through 
the  gap  of  Nancy,  their  enemies  from  that  gap 
were  beginning  to  enter  Lorraine.  From  the 
Donon  they  descended  into  the  Valley  of  the 
Bruche  and  struck  the  railway  from  Saales  to 
Strassburg,  capturing  1,500  prisoners,  12  guns. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAK. 


295 


and  eight  mitrailleuses.  On  the  15th  the  Ger- 
mans had  been  repulsed  at  Dinant  and  on  the 
16th  the  whole  of  the  British  Expeditionary 
Force  was  on  French  soil.  A  communique 
of  August  17  reported  that  in  Upper  Alsace 
the  Germans  were  retiring  in  great  disorder, 
abandoning  vast  quantities  of  material.  Various 
German  atrocities  in  the  region  of  Belfort  were 
notified,  and  it  is  interesting  to  observe  that 
German  civilians  took  part  in  the  fighting. 
The  Germans  had  one  law  for  themselves, 
another  for  their  enemies.  To  the  south 
of  Saarburg,  between  Avricourt  and  Zabern, 
the  Germans  had  fortified  a  strong  position  and 
armed  it  with  heavy  artillery.  They  were  driven 
from  it  by  the  French,  and  on  the  18th  Saar- 
burg was  seized  and  the  direct  line  of  railway 
between  Metz  and  Strassburg  cut.  It  almost 
seemed  that  the  French  would  be  in  front  of 
Metz  and  Strassburg  before  the  Germans 
arrived  at  Brussels. 

The  satisfaction  felt  in  Paris  was  speedily 
turned  to  anxiety.  The  Germans  had  concen- 
trated several  corps  d'armee  for  a  counter- 
attack, which  began  on  August  20,  the  very 
day    that   the    enemy   entered   Brussels.     The 


Germans  by  superior  numbers  overwhelmed 
the  French  troops  in  Lorraine  ;  they  claimed  to 
have  captured  10,000  prisoners  and  50  guns. 
The  French  left  wing  retired  on  the  advanced 
works  of  Nancy,  while  the  right  endeavoured  to 
maintain  itself  on  the  Donon.  By  August  23  — 
the  day  after  the  defeat  of  the  French  at  Charle- 
roi  and  the  day  of  the  battle  of  Mons  and  the 
capture  of  Namur  by  the  Germans — the  French 
were  on  or  behind  the  Meurthe  which  flows  into 
the  Moselle  below  Nancy  ;  and  Luneville,  on  the 
Meurthe,  was  in  their  possession.  The  Donon 
and  the  pass  of  Saales  were  evacuated.  Two 
days  later  the  French  retired  from  Alsace, 
abandoning  Miilhausen.  They  were  pursued  by 
the  Germans,  but  a  general  attack  all  along  the 
line  was  repulsed.  The  exceedingly  vigorous 
advance  of  the  enemy  on  Paris  had  forced 
General  Joffre  to  re-form  his  right  wing  and  to 
concentrate  his  reserves  on  the  extreme  left. 
It  was  the  arrival  of  General  Pau  at  Paris 
which,  perhaps,  as  much  as  anything  saved  the 
capital  from  being  besieged  by  Von  Kluck. 

The  news  of  the  German  victory  in  Lorraine 
was  received  in  Berlin  and  elsewhere  throughout 
the  German  Empire  and  in  Austria  with  great 


GENERALS   JOFFRE,  MICHEL,  GALLIENI,  AND   PAU.    [Newspaptr  lUuslraiions. 


296 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


rejoicing.     A  Cabinet  Order  was  issued  by  the 
Kaiser,  in  which  he  stated  : — 

The  mobilization  and  concentration  of  the  Army 
is  now  complete,  the  German  railways  having  carried 
out  the  enormous  transnort  movements  with  un- 
paralleled certainty  and  punctuality.  With  a  heart 
filled  with  gratitude  my  first  thoughts  turn  to  those 
who  since  1870-1  hav3  worked  quietly  upon  the 
development  of  an  organization  which  has  emerged 
from  its  first  serious  test  with  such  glorious  success 
To  all  who  have  cooperated  with  them  I  wish  to 
express  my  Imperial  thanks  for  their  loyal  devotion 
to  duty  in  making  possible  in  obedience  to  my  call  the 
transportation  of  armed  masses  of  German  troops 
against  my  enemies.  The  present  achievement  con- 
vinces me  that  the  railways  of  the  country  will  be 
equal  to  the  heaviest  demands  that  might  be  made 
upon  them  dtuing  the  course  of  the  gigantic  struggle 
in  which  we  are  engaged  for  the  future  of  the  German 
nation. 

The  reflections  of  the  Kaiser  were  justified. 
Napt  leon  III.  in  exile  had  said  that  the  French 
had   been   defeated     in    1870-1     because    they 


had  not  understood  the  value  of  railwaj^. 
The  Grermans  will  not  be  able  to  complain  that 
the  Kaiser  neglected  to  provide  adequate 
means  of  traction.  Never,  indeed,  had  an 
army  been  better  supplied  with  mechanical 
appliances  than  the  German. 

The  French  invasion  of  Alsace  had  failed, 
but  had  it  been,  as  a  strategical  move,  a  failure  ? 
Time  woxild  show.  It  had  stiffened  the  moral 
of  the  French  ;  it  had  convinced  them  that 
man  for  man  they  were  more  than  a  match 
for  the  Grermans  ;  it  had  probably  prevented 
the  Germans  at  the  outset  of  the  war  flinging 
themselves  through  the  gap  of  Nancy  and 
disturbing  the  French  mobilization  ;  and  the 
advance  on  Sa^rburg  had  forced  the  German 
leaders  to  draw  southward  to  the  Meurthe 
forces  which  could  have  been  used  more  effec- 
tively on  the  Meuse  between  Verdun  and 
Sedan. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 


GERMAN    CONQUEST    OF 
BELGIUM. 


Pbussian  "  CuiiTxjRE  " — ^Mommsen's  Una V ailing  Protest — Tbeitschke's  Dominance — The 
Country  of  Belgium — Industry  and  Independence — Art  and  Civic  Life— r-GERivLAJsr  Methods 
OF  Warfare — ^Vise — ^Li6ge — Dinant — Namur — ^Louvain — Its  History — Its  Buildings — Its 
University — ^Louvain  Scholars — Louvain  and  England — Destruction  of  Louvain — ^Malines 
—Its  Ancient  Dignity — St.  Rombaut — Old  Houses — Destruction  of  Malines — Termonde 
— Its  Utter  Ruin — Alost — Deynze  and  Thielt — Antwerp — Agriculture. 


AT  the  outbreak  of  the  war  it  became 
swiftly  evident  that  the  German 
forces  had  no  intention  of  sparing 
any  of  the  horrors  of  war  to  the 
towns  and  villages  through  which  they  were  to 
pass.  This  need,  perhaps,  have  caused  httle 
surprise,  at  any  rate  among  those  who  had 
studied  German  methods  of  warfare  in  other 
parts  of  the  globe.  In  July,  1900,  the  Emperor 
William  II.,  addressing  the  German  troops  dis- 
patched to  quell  the  Boxer  rising  in  China,  said  : 
"  Whoever  falls  into  your  hands  is  forfeit  to  you, 
just  as  1,000  years  ago  the  Huns  under  King 
Attila  made  a  name  for  themselves  which  is  stUl 
mighty  in  tradition  and  story."  Such  an  utter- 
ance seems  as  sharply  opposed  to  the  common 
ideal  of  that  "  culture  "  of  which  the  German 
Empire  has  proclaimed  itself  the  apostle  as 
the  acts  committed  by  the  Prussian  troops  are 
to  the  accepted  notions  of  warfare  among 
civilized  peoples  ;  but  the  contradiction  is  not 
so  difficult  to  understand  when  the  'true 
meaning  of    German"   culture  "  is  realized. 

The  root-principle  of  German  "  cultvire " 
is  this  :  German  civilization  is  the  best,  there- 
fore it  is  Germany's  duty  to  impose  it  every- 
where. "  The  Germans  "  (writes  Mr.  Cloudesley 
Brereton  in  his  book  "  Who  is  Responsible  ?  ") 
"  are  the  chosen  people  of  the  twentieth  century. 
Hence,  one  law  for  the  Germans  and  another  for 
other  nations — or,  in  other  words,  a  total 
disregard  for  international  law,  as  instanced  by 


the  Belgian  atrocities  and  the  destruction  of 
Louvain."  One  man  in  particular  is  responsible 
for  the  expression  and  the  systematization  of 
this  philosophy,  which  had  its  origin  in  the 
Prussian  mind  at  least  as  far  back  as  the  days 
of  Frederick  the  Great.  That  man  was  Heinrich 
von  Treitschke,  a  professor  in  the  University 
of  Berlin  and  a  member  of  the  Reichstag.  Tall 
and  impressive  in  appearance,  though  harsh- 
voiced,  clumsy,  and  mechanical  in  speech, 
Treitschke  attracted  round  him  not  only  the 
students  of  the  university,  but  soldiers,  writers, 
officials,  all  the  intellectual  leadership  of 
Germany.  So  far  back  as  1866  Sir  A.  W.  Ward, 
now  Master  of  Peterhouse,  Cambridge,  called 
attention  to  the  tendencies  in  Treitschke's 
teaching,  his  avowed  aim  being  "  through 
history  to  govern  politics,"  to  forecast  and 
bring  to  being  the  future  through  an  under- 
standing of  the  past.  The  victory  over  France 
in  the  war  of  1870-1871  largely  determined  what 
that  f utiire  was  to  be,  and  at  the  same  time  in- 
fluenced and  directed  the  teaching  of  Treitschke. 
Success  in  arms  led  to  a  wave  of  materialism  that 
swept  over  the  country.  Wealth  and  industry 
were  the  sole  objects  of  German  desire.  The  great 
German  historian,  Theodor  Mommsen,  4iad 
issued  a  warning  which  might  well  have  been 
laid  to  heart.  "  Have  a  care,"  he  said,  "  lest 
in  this  State,  which  has  been  at  once  a  power 
in  arms  and  a  power  in  intelligence,  the 
intelligence  should  vanish  and  nothing  but  the 


297 


298 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


BELGIAN  SOLDIERS  ON  THE  MARCH. 


[Newspaper  Illustrations, 


pure  military  State  should  remain."  But 
Mommsen's  warning  remained  unheeded ;  and 
Treitschke  was  there  to  throw  the  glamour  of  a 
false  idealism  over  these  debasing  tendencies. 
He  gave  them,  it  has  been  said,  a  soul,  and  that 
soul  was  the  quintessence  of  the  worst  and 
most  dangerous  qualities  of  victorioiis  Ger- 
many, glorified  only  by  the  scale  on  which 
they  were  to  be  applied.  First,  aU  Germany 
must  become  an  expansion  of  Prussia  ;  next, 
Germany  being  the  chosen  people,  German 
dominion  miist  be  extended  over  the  whole 
world  by  any  and  every  means.  There  miist  be 
no  surrender  to  "  fine  phrases  of  tolerance  and 
enlightenment "  ;  that  the  strong  should 
triumph  over  the  weak  is  an  inexorable  law  of 
nature.  Such  are  the  grounds  of  the  "  new 
barbarism,"  which  Monunsen  foresaw  as  the 
outcome  of  victory  and  material  aims  as 
philosophized  by  Treitschke,  To  most  civilized 
peoples  "  culture  "  means  a  state  of  mind  that 
includes  knowledge  and  love  of  the  great  works 
of  beauty  of  the  past  and  the  present ;  an  inner 
"  sweetness  and  light,"  as  Matthaw  Arnold  ex- 
pressed it  ;  respect  for  other  people's  rights 
and  feelings  :  a  chivalrous  attitude  to  the  weak 
and  a  pride  that  will  not  stoop  to  barbaric  acts 
of  violence.  German  "  culture  "  means  rather 
the  aggrandisement  by  any  and  every  means 
of  Germany  and  the  Germans  ;  the  imposition 
upon     the     whole     world     of    the     German 


dominion  ;    the  ruthless   destruction    of    any 
thing     that     may  stand    in   the   way  of   that 
object. 

In  Belgium  the  Germans  found  a  country 
peculiarly  liable  to  vandalism.  The  leading 
characteristic  of  Belgium's  achievements  in  all 
fields  is  that  she  owes  very  httle  to  unsought 
advantage  and  nearly  everything  to  hard  work. 
Her  natural  beauties,  save  in  the  south-eastern 
corner,  are  not  the  ready-made  beauties  of 
Italy,  of  the  Alpi?,  of  the  Rhine.  Over  a  great 
portion  of  her  surface  she  has  not  the  fertile 
soil  which  makes  parts  of  England,  of  France, 
and  of  Italy  peculiarly  and  almost  inevitably 
fruitful.  Between  Ghent  and  Antwerp,  to 
take  an  instance,  lies  the  district  known  as  the 
Waesland.  A  few  centuries  ago  the  Waesland 
was  a  barren  moor  ;  to-day  every  inch  of  it 
is  cultivated,  and  some  of  the  trimmest  and 
most  attractive  farms  in  Belgium  are  dotted 
about  it.  The  whole  sandy  district  has  been 
covered,  cartload  by  cartloewl,  spadeful  by 
spadeful,  with  good  soil  brought  from  elsewhere  ; 
and,  in  order  to  be  worth  cultivation,  each 
field,  shaped  at  edge  and  comer  with  the 
characteristic  neatness  of  the  Belgians,  mi  st  be 
as  carefuUy  and  minutely  tended  as  a  flower- 
bed. By  comparison  with  the  Waesland,  even 
the  flower-gardens  of  Ghent  are  a  light  achieve- 
ment ;  yet  Ghent,  the  flower-city  of  Europe, 
owes   her  supremacy   far   less   to  any  natural 


i 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


299 


kindliness  or  wealth  of  soil  than  to  the  minute 
and  unremitting  labour  that  has  created  what 
Nature  had  denied.  Belgium  loves  her  flowers 
— we  may  imagine,then,  the  feelings  of  the  people 
of  Brussels  when  they  watched,  on  the  arrival 
of  the  Germans,  cavalry  officers  wantonly 
trampling  under  their  horses'  hoofs,  in  a  lust 
of  brutal  destruction,  the  flower-beds  of  the 
city.  To  her  unremitting  labour  in  the  coal- 
mines of  the  Borinage,  the  great  iron  and  steel 
factories  of  Charleroi,  the  fields  and  gardens  of 
Flanders,  Belgium  owes  her  wealth.  Even  t,be 
forests  of  the  Ardennes  are  kept  with  a  careful 
arboriculture  that  no  other  country  can  excel. 
And  to  this  thoroughness  and  skill  in  labour 
Belgium  has  always  owed  her  position.  Very 
early  in  her  history  we  find  the  Belgian  weavers 
the  finest  in  Europe,  their  trade  and  commerce 
rich  enough  to  bring  them  safely  through  all 
but  the  most  serious  of  their  troubles.  Turbulent 
fellows  they  were,  these  weavers.  Louvain, 
Ypres,  and  especially  Ghent  could  tell  terrible 
tales  of  their  risings  against  authority  imposed 
from  without.  The  tall  and  noble  belfries 
which  adorned  many  old  Belgian  towns  before 
the  outbreak  of  war  had  stood  for  centuries 
as  memorials  of  their  watchfulness  against 
attack  or  tyranny ;  for  there  hung  the  great  bell 
whose  most  notable  fimction  it  was  to  summon 
the  citizens  together  to  resist  the  troops  of  the 
foreigner  or  of  the  ruler.     But  it  was  precisely 


this  sturdy  independence  of  theirs,  controlled 
and  intensified  by  the  corporate  spirit  of  the 
trade  guild,  that  made  the  greatness  of  medie- 
val Belgium,  and  also  raised  the  Flemish 
to  a  position  in  the  world  of  art  second  only 
to  that  of  Italy.  In  Belgium,  for  all  the 
magnificence  of  Philip  the  Bold  of  Burgimdy, 
or  his  grandson  Philip  the  Good,  or  in  later  years 
of  the  Archduchess  Clara  Isabella  Eugenia  and 
her  husband,  the  Spanish  Governors,  the  most 
effective  patron  of  art  in  Belgium  was  not,  as 
in  Italy,  the  prince  or  ruler,  but  the  town,  or 
the  trade  guild,  in  its  intimate  association 
with  the  Church.  This  applies  in  particular 
to  architecture.  The  church  and  the  town 
hall  and  the  mirket  hall  are  the  chief  beauties 
of  every  Belgian  town,  and  all  three  are  the 
creation  of  the  workers,  the  burgesses  and 
traders,  seeking  to  fulfil  their  own  needs  and 
ideals,  not,  like  the  Siegesallee  at  Berlin, 
an  ideal  imposed  by  a  single  dominant  will  and 
taste  upon  a  submissive  public.  With  regard 
to  the  churches,  though  architecturally  most  of 
them  are  less  interesting  than  the  Cloth  Halls 
and  the  Town  Halls,  inasmuch  as  they  are  due 
rather  to  the  influence  of  French  Gothic  than  to 
any  independent  Flemish  school  of  architecture, 
they  are  nevertheless  almost  inevitably  dearer 
to  the  Belgians  than  to  most  peoples,  not  only 
because  the  Belgian  still  emulates  his  forbears 
in  lavishing  upon  the  Church  all  the  wealth  he 


FUGITIVES  ON  THE  ROAD. 


[Ctntral  Pnss, 


300 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


LOU  VAIN. 
General  view  after  bombardment. 


[Nevspaper  Illustrations. 


can  spare,  that  it  may  be  rich  in  pictiires  and 
carving,  in  stained  glass  and  marble  and  plate, 
but  because  Belgium  remains  a  devoutly 
religious  country,  a  more  thoroughly  and 
willingly  CathoUc  country  even  than  Spain. 
And  just  as  the  civic  Ufe  reached  in  Flanders 
its  strongest  and  freest  development,  so 
the  ancient  Town  Halls  of  Belgium  are 
the  most  elaborate  and  daring  expres- 
sions of  that  development.  Upon  them 
the  pubhc  spirit,  working  through  its  archi- 
tects and  sculptors,  set  free  all  the  pride  and 
independence,  all  the  riotous  invagination, 
religious  and  worldly  fancy,  all  the  broad  humour 
and  spiritual  aspiration  and  earthly  satisfaction 
which  characterized  Flanders  in  its  ancient 
days  of  prosperity.  The  Town  Hall  dominating 
the  Groot'  -Markt,  or  grand'  place,  of  a  Belgian 
town,  is  more  than  a  work  of  art.  It  is  a 
symbol  of  a  spirit  that  has  not  yet  died  out  of 
Belgium,  though  the  towns  which  possess  the 
finest  examples  may  be  but  one -third  of  their 
ancient  size,  and  the  greater  part  of  the  once 
crowded  space  within  the  old  walls  may  be 
laid   out   in  gardnas   and  walks.    The   Town 


Hall  proclaims  the  spirit  of  hard  and  honourable 
work  ;  it  is  the  voice  of  Belgium's  old  prayer, 
"Leave  me  alone  to  do  my  work  and  be  happy 
in  my  own  way  !  "  That  prayer  has  but  seldom 
been  answered,  and  once  more  "  the  cockpit  of 
Europe  "  was  to  be  subjected  to  the  brutalities 
of  an  invading  force. 

It  is  the  same  story  with  regard  to  the 
Flemish  school  of  painting.  Unlike  tho  rest 
of  Europe,  Flanders  in  painting  owed  little 
or  nothing  to  Italy.  Characteristically,  she 
worked  out  her  own  art  on  her  own  lines, 
independent  of  foreign  influence  and  largely 
independent  of  Court  encouragement.  It  is 
democratic  art — the  art  of  the  town  and  the 
home — that  won  fame  for  Flanders  in  the 
domain  of  true  culture.  It  can  scarcely  even 
be  said  that  there  was  any  artistic  centre  in  the 
land.  Sporadic  bchools  of  art  grew  up  in  separate 
towns.  Bruges  gave  birth  to  Van  Eyck  ;  Louvain 
was  the  artistic  home  of  Roger  van  der  Weyden 
and  of  Dierck  Bouts  :  Termonde  had  its  special 
school  of  painters  and  so  had  many  other  towns. 

This,  then,  was  the  country  or  which  all  the 
horrors  of  false  culture  were  let  loose :  a  country 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


301 


of  genuine  and  ancient  culture,  which  its  people 
had  worked  out  for  themselves  along  their  own 
lines  with  their  characteristic  independence 
and  sturdy  individuality  ;  a  country  where  men 
loved  their  comfortable  homes,  their  noble 
churches,  their  monuments  of  civic  wealth  and 
self-governance.  It  was  not  the  less  on  that 
account,  as  the  invader  learned  to  his  cost, 
a  country  where  each  man  could  defend,  with 
unmatched  pertinacity  and  courage,  the  rewards 
that  he  had  toiled  to  win,  the  home  that  he  had 
built  lip  for  himself,  his  family,  and  his  kind. 

The  first  news  of  the  methods  by  which  the 
Germans  intended  to  carry  on  war  upon  the 
country  which  they  had  invaded,  in  spite  of 
their  sworn  promise  to  maintain  its  neutrality 
inviolate,  came  from  Vise,  12  miles  north-east 
of  Liege.  On  August  6  it  became  known  that 
they  had  burned  a  portion  of  the  town ;  but  a 
few  families  remained  there.  Some  few  days 
later  shots  were  again  fired  in  the  town — by  the 
inhabitants,  said  the  Germans ;  by  drunken 
German  soldiers,  said  the  inhabitants.  Which- 
ever the  truth,  Vise  was  burned  to  the  ground. 
An  attractive  city  of  nearly  4,000  inhabitants, 
typical  in  the  cheery  pride  and  gaiety  of  the 
Walloon  portion  of  Belgium,  Vise  possessed  a 
quaint  town  hall,  and  in  the  church  was  a 
famous  reliquary,  the  silver  Chasse  de  St. 
HadeJin,  of  which  the  fine  relief  work  proclaimed 
it  to  date  from  the  early  part  of  the  12th 
century.  The  stories  of  those  who  visited  Vise 
soon  afterwards  tell  ot  nothing  but  smoking 
ruins,  not  a  house  standing  intact,  and  in  the 
blackened  and  smoking  streets  the  bodies  of 
non-combatant  townsfolk  riddled  with  bullets 
or  pierced  with  bayonets.  The  town  of  Argen- 
teau,  beautifully  situated  on  the  Meuse  beneath 
its  limestone  rocks,  crowned  with  the  ancient 
and  the  modern  chateaux,  shared  the  same 
fate.  And  all  about  this  district,  wherever  the 
German  troops  could  reach,  lay  burnt-out 
farms  and  smouldering  villages.  Streets  were 
burned  at  Huy,  the  fascinating  town  on  the 
Meuse  at  the  mouth  of  the  Hoyoux.  Louveigne 
and  Bar-le-Duc  were  totally  destroyed.  Ver- 
viers  was  largely  burned.  Soiron  was  sacked. 
Before  the  Germans  had  captured  Li^ge  they 
had  done  their  best  to  devastate  the  country- 
side and  to  destroy  all  the  villages  and  towns, 
all  of  them  open  and  undefended,  upon  which 
they  came. 

Li6ge  itself  was  a  fortified  town,  and  must 
therefore  expect  to  suffer  for  defending  itself  ; 
but  Liege  unquestionably  suffered  more  than 
the  demands  of  military  action  required.  She 
had  always  been  a  storm-centre  in  history  and 
had   suffered  much,  as  has    been  shown    in  a 


previous  chapter ;  but  now,  although  still  an 
ancient  and  a  proud  city,  Liege  was  an  in- 
dustrial town  of  great  importance  and  activity. 
For  more  than  a  hundred  years  she  had 
settled  down  to  quiet  if  strenuous  labour, 
and  in  those  hundred  years  she  had  done  very 
much  to  improve  her  appearance  and  her 
conditions.  She  had  built  bridges  over  the 
Meuse ;  she  had  provided  a  viniversity.  Of 
these  bridges,  the  Pont  des  Arches, .  the 
town's  pride,  built  on  the  site  of  a 
bridge  dating  from  the  11th  century  ;  the  Pont 
de  Fragnee,  with  its  sculptured  tritons  and 
mermaids,  and  others  were  destroyed.  The 
University  bviildings,  which  included  an  ancient 
Jesuit  college,  with  its  library,  its  museima  of 
antediluvian  animals  found  in  the  caves  for 
which  the  district  is  remarkable,  were  burned  ; 
and  of  the  tale  of  houses  destroyed  by  in- 
cendiarism or  by  shell  fire  there  is  no  end.  On 
one  occasion,  some  shots  being  fired  from  a 
house,  the  German  soldiers  turned  machine- 
guns  on  the  street,  destroying  many  houses 
and  killing  the  inmates,  while  other  houses  were 
set  on  fire. 


BRIDGE   OVER   THE   MEUSE, 
Showing  the  destroyed  centre. 

, .  [Newstaper  Illustrations. 


302 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


DINANT. 
As  it  appeared  before  bombardment. 


iS,  E.  Fincham, 


Far  more  dreadful  was  the  fate  of  Dinant. 
This  wonderfully  picturesque  old  town  is  well 
known  to  a  great  many  English  people.  Quiet, 
smUing,  and  gently  gay,  it  lay  on  the  banks  of 
the  Meuse  in  a  coiintry  peciiliarly  rich  in  the 
fables  and  history  of  romance.  Just  as  the 
district  round  Liege  is  sacred  to  the  legends  of 
Charlemagne  and  the  cradle  of  the  ratce  of 
Pepin,  which  gave  to  France  her  kings,  so  round 
Dinant  lies  a  world  of  beautiful  legend.  The 
four  sons  of  Aymon,  for  instance,  and  their 
great  horse  Bayard,  dwelt  in  the  castle  hard 
by  ;  and  here  is  the  Roche  k  Bayard,  where  the 
great  steed  left  his  hoof -mark,  as,  pursued  by 
Charlemagne,  he  leaped  across  the  valley. 
And  Dinant  itself  was  surely  one  of  the  most 
picturesque  towns  in  the  world.  It  lay  on  the 
bank  of  the  Meuse,  under  the  shelter  of  the 
enormous  cliff  on  which  stood  its  citadel.  The 
church  of  Notre  Dame  lay  just  beneath  that 
cliff,  pressed  so  closely  against  it,  wrote  Camille 
Lemonnier,  "  that  it  seems  like  a  block  of  the 
mountain  itself  into  which  light  has  been  let 
through  its  tall  windows.  The  moiuitain  has 
here  said  to  the  work  of  man's  hands  :  '  Thus 
fgkr  shalt  thou  go,  and  no  farther.'  Thus, 
pressed  against  the  rock,  the  flower  of  the  late 
half  of  the  13th  century,  which  would  otherwise 
appear  imposing,  seems  reduced  to  moderate  pro- 
portions by  comparison  with  the  colossal  height 
that  crushes  and  stifles  it  with  its  prodigiovis 


mass.  Seen  from  below  or  from  above,  the 
church  looks  like  a  dwarf  beside  a  giant,  as  if 
Nature  had  intended  to  make  the  real  cathedral 
of  the  cliff  and  left  nothing  to  the  builder  of 
the  chvirch  but  the  chance  of  distantly  imita- 
ting the  mountain.  Yet,  dwarfed  as  it  is  by 
this  huge  pUe  of  stone,  the  church  none  the  less 
keeps  its  precious  beauty.  Scarcely  has  one 
set  foot  beneath  its  vaulted  roof  than  its  magic 
begins  to  work,  and  within  this  restricted  space, 
which  from  outside  seems  incompatible  with 
the  idea  of  grandeur,  the  three  aisles  open  out, 
ample  and  magnificent  between  their  venerable 
pillars,  like  the  deep  alleys  of  a  forest.  Notre 
Dame  of  Dinant  was  one  of  the  purest  blooms 
in  the  garden  of  early  Gothic,  a  fair  and  spotless 
lily  in  the  glorious  pleasaunce  of  great  Catholic 
churches."  In  decoration  Notre  Dame  de 
Dinant  was  not  rich,  though  it  contained  some 
admirable  work  in  copper,  and  had  notable 
twelfth-century  fonts.  But  its  architectural 
beauty,  its  wonderful  doorways,  and  its  mural 
paintings  made  it  remarkable,  no  less  than  its 
position  under  the  cliff  which  dwarfed  its 
tulip-shaped  tower  of  more  than  200  feet  high. 
The  T6wn  Hall  was  ancient  and  interesting. 
On  the  summit  of  the  cliff,  reached  by  a  flight 
of  408  steps,  stood  the  Citadel,  erected  by  the 
Dutch  in  the  15th  century.  And  the  bridge  of 
Dinant,  a  worthy  successor  of  a  very  old  bridge, 
which   in   its   turn   replaced  others  yet  older 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


303 


— one  of  which  had  five  arches  and  a  tower  two 
storeys  high — was  famous  all  over  Belgium. 

By  shell-fire  and  the  incendiarism  provided 
by  their  special  celluloid  bombs  and  discs  of 
compressed  chemicals  the  Germans  destroyed 
Dinant  in  a  few  hoiors.  Not  Charles  the  Bold 
of  Burgundy,  when  he  seized  the  town  in  1466, 
not  all  the  attacks  and  havoc  in  the  long 
struggle  between  Dinant  and  its  neighbour 
and  rival  Bovignes,  worked  so  much  destruc- 
tion as  the  entry  of  Prussian  "  kultixr  "  in  August, 
1914,  The  excuse  was  the  familiar  one — that 
shots  had  been  fired  at  the  German  troops  by 
non-combatant  inhabitants.  The  civilized 
world  had  soon  good  reason  for  doubting  the 
truth  of  that  invariable  pretext.  Be  that  as 
it  may,  this  is  the  story  of  Dinant,  as  told  by 
Mr.  Arthur  Terwagne,  brother  of  the  Deputy  of 
Antwerp,  in  the  Belgian  newspaper  Le  Matin  : — 

On  August  15  a  tremendous  battle  was  fought  in 
the  streets  of  the  town  between  the  French  and  the 
Germans,  while  the  guns  thundered  away  at  each 
other  from  both  sides  of  the  Meuse.  The  town  suf- 
fered very  little  during  this  battle,  only  a  few  houses 
afterwards  bearing  signs  of  the  bombardment,  which 
lasted  13  hours.  Daring  the  following  days  the 
French  retired  on  to  the  left  bank  of  the  Meuse,  where 
they  remained  up  to  the  day  on  which  the  order  for  a 
general  retreat  was  given. 


In  the  night  of  August  21  a  German  armoured 
motor-car  entered  Dinant  by  the  Rue  Saint-Jacques, 
and,  without  the  slightest  provocation,  began  to 
fire  on  the  houses  in  this  street.  A  woman  sleeping  in 
her  bed  was  killed,  and  her  child,  which  was  at  her 
side,  was  mortally  wounded.  Startled  by  the  noise 
of  the  firing,  a  man  and  his  wife  opened  the  door  of 
their  house.  They  were  immediately  done  to  death 
by  Uhlans.  An  employee  of  the  gasworks  who  was 
returning  from  his  work  was  killed  on  his  doorstep. 
The  assassins^for  one  cannot  call  them  soldiers — • 
set  fire  to  several  houses  before  they  bravely  with- 
drew. 

But  these  savage  acts  were  only  the  prelude  to  the 
fate  which  the  horde  of  brigands  were  reserving  for 
the  unhappy  town  of  Dinant.  On  the  following  day 
large  masses  of  troops  arrived  and  were  guilty  of  the 
most  abominable  atrocities  which  have  ever  been 
recorded.  The  Germans  forced  open  the  doors  of  the 
houses  and  murdered  everyone  they  found  within. 
There  was  Victor  Poncelet,  done  to  death  in  the 
presence  of  his  wife  and  of  his  six  children  ;  there  were 
the  members  of  the  staff  of  the  firm  of  Capelle,  mur- 
dered in  cold  blood.  In  every  house  a  fresh  crime  was 
committed,  while  the  women  were  driven  from  their 
beds  and  taken,  half  naked,  to  a  monastery,  where 
they  were  kept  for  three  days  with  hardly  any  food, 
half  dead  with  hunger  and  fear. 

Some  workmen  of  LefEe  hid  in  a  drain  near  the 
large  cotton  mill,  the  manager  of  which,  M.  Himmer. 
was  killed.  There  were  about  60  of  them,  and  when 
the  Germans  discovered  them  they  shot  them  all. 
although  not  one  of  them  was  armed.  In  the  Fau- 
bourg Saint-Pierre  a  number  of  men  hid  in  the 
cellars  of  the  brewery  owned  by  the  brothers  Nicaise, 
old  men  of  over  70,  and  their  nephew,  Jules  Monin. 


DINANT  AFTER   BOMBARDMENT. 
Remains  of  tbe  famous  Cbxircb  and  Bridge. 


[Newspaper  lllustrationSt 


304 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


The  modern  barbarians  had  pity  on  none.  All  of 
them  fell  under  the  German  bullets — ^they  were  about 
40  in  number. 

Over  200  men  and  lads — old  men  of  75  and  boys  of 
12  and  14 — fathers  and  sons  together,  were  driven  on 
to  the  Place  d'Armes.  In  order  that  the  work  might 
be  carried  out  more  quickly  a  machine  gun  was  brought 
up.  It  was  here  that  Xavier  Wasseige,  the  manager  of 
the  Banque  de  la  Meuse,  was  killed,  together  with 
his  two  sons,  and  here  too  died  Camille  Fisette  and 
his  little  boy,  aged  12. 

The  fate  of  the  male  inhabitants  having  thus  been 
settled,  the  Germans  set  to  work  methodically  on  the 
destruction  of  the  town,  using  bombs  to  set  fire  to  the 
houses.  Soon  nothing  but  a  heap  of  ashes  remained. 
The  district  of  Saint-Medart,  between  the  station 
and  the  bridge,  has  been  wiped  out.  Coming  from  the 
bridge  to  Bouvignes,  the  first  house  that  is  left  stand- 
ing is  the  Hotel  du  Nord.  The  splendid  post-office 
building  is  a  heap  of  ruins.  The  bridge  is  destroyed, 
the  Grermans  having  built  a  pontoon  bridge  a  little 
higher  up  the  river.  The  church  has  lost  its  cele- 
brated tower,  and  all  the  houses  of  the  Rue  Sax,  near 
the  Meuse,  have  been  destroyed.  In  the  Rue  Grande, 
the  Grand'  Place,  and  the  Place  Saint-Nicolas  it  is 
the  same,  and  it  is  said  that  many  families  who  had 
hidden  in  the  cellars  died  in  the  flames.  But  for  one 
or  two  houses  in  the  Place  de  la  Meuse,  the  Laurent 
restaurant  and  a  few  houses  standing  beside  it.  the 
barracks  and  the  communal  school,  in  which  the  Ger- 
man garrison  is  lodged,  the  whole  town  of  Dinant  has 
been  destroyed. 

That  is  what  the  bandits  of  the  great  Empire  which 
wished  to  nile  Europe  have  done  to  one  of  the  most 
picturesque  towns  of  Belgium.  The  monster  who 
presided  over  these  abominable  atrocities  was  Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Beeger. 

Namur,  the  famous  town  on  the  Meuse, 
beloved  of  all  English  people  for  its  memories 
of  Tristram  Shandy's  "  My  Uncle  Toby,"  who, 
it  will  be  remembered,  was  wounded  there, 
and  solaced   his   declining   years  by   following 


the  movements  of  the  Allies  m  the  miniature 
fortifications  in  his  own  orchard — ^Namur, 
a  great  fortress  town  in  the  17th  and  18th  cen- 
turies, and  a  yet  greater  fortress  town  in  the 
20th  century,  was  given  up  sooner  than  was 
expected,  and  therefore  escaped  all  the  horrors 
of  devastation  that  were  with  good  reason  feared. 
Scarcely,  however,  had  Namur  fallen  than  the 
civilized  world  was  "horrified  by  the  news  of  an 
act  of  vandalism  far  greater  than  any  that  the 
German  troops  had  yet  committed — a  greater, 
indeed,  than  it  seemed  likely  that  they  could 
commit  in  the  coiirse  of  the  whole  war.  On 
August  25  the  town  of  Louvain  was  destroyed. 
Louvain,  on  the  River  Dyle,  some  30  miles 
south-east  of  Antwerp  and  18  miles  east  of 
Brussels,  had  the  reputation  of  being  a  dull 
town.  A  quiet  town  it  certainly  was,  but 
not  dull  for  anyone  interested  in  the 
humanities  and  the  study  of  ancient 
achievements  in  art  and  learning.  In  old  days 
Louvain,  like  most  of  the  towns  of  Belgium, 
was  a  large  and  prosperous  commercial  place, 
with  something  over  100,000  inhabitants,  more 
than  double  its  population  on  the  outbreak  of 
the  Great  War.  It  was  the  seat  of  the  ducal 
house  of  Lower  Lorraine,  or,  as  it  came  after- 
wards to  be  called,  the  house  of  Brabant ;  and, 
like  most  of  these  cities,  it  had  no  great  love  tor 
its  rulers.  A  more  terrible  scene  than  any 
enacted  even  in  Ghent  took  place  here  in  1378-9, 
when  from  the  windows  of  the  town  hall  (nob 
the  present  building)  13  magistrates  of  patrician 


REFUGEES  ON  THE  ROAD  BETWEEN  MALINES  AND  BRUSSELS. 

{Newspaper  lUuilrations. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


305 


NAMUR. 
The  Citadel  from  the  river. 


blood  were  tossed  by  the  populace  on  to  the 
swords  and  halberds  raised  up  to  receive  them 
from  the  square  below.  A  terrible  vengeance 
was  exacted  by  Duke  Wenceslas  a  few  years 
later — a  vengeance  from  which  Louvain  had 
never  commercially  or  financially  recovered — 
yet  a  vengeance  less  terrible  than  that  of  the 
apostles  of  culture,  who  had  received  no  provo- 
cation whatever  from  its  then  peaceful  and  quiet 
citizens. 

Ecclesiastically  the  central  point  of  Louvain 
was  the  magnificent  late  Gothic  church  of  St. 
Peter,  designed  in  1425  by  Sulpice  van  Vorst 
to  take  the  place  of  an  earlier  building,  with  his 
son  and  the  statuary  Eustache  van  Molenbcke 
to  aid  him  in  the  sculptural  portion  of  the 
splendid  edifice.  It  was  originally  intended  that 
of  its  five  towers  the  highest  should  rise  to  535ft., 
but  the  fotmdations  proved  insufficiently  strong. 
The  interior  of  the  chixrch  had  a  majesty  and 
solemnity  all  its  own,  and  in  treasiu-es  of  art 
it  was  peculiarly  rich.  At  one  time  it  was  the 
fortimate  possessor  of  the  famous  triptych 
by  Qiientin  Matsys,  the  great  master — origi- 
nally an   ironsmith   and   always   an   exquisite 


worker  in  metal  as  well  as  in  paint, who  was  born 
in  Louvain,  to  become  later  the  greatest  Flemish 
coloiirist  and  the  founder  of  the  Antwerp  school. 
This  triptych  was  removed  some  years  ago  to 
the  Museum  at  Brussels ;  but  St.  Pierre  of 
Louvain  still  possessed  one,  or  more,  of  the 
glories  of  Flemish  painting,  the  great  "  Last 
Supper  "  of  Dierck  Bouts  (long  attributed  to 
Mending)  and  the  striking,  if  unpleasant, 
*'  Martyrdom  of  St.  Erasmus,"  by  the  same 
painter,  who  settled  in  Louvain  about  the  middle 
of  the  15th  century  and  became  painter  to  the 
municipality.  The  "  Last  Supper  "  was  painted 
about  1467,  and  is  iiniversally  acknowledged  to 
be  the  artist's  masterpiece.  The  picture  in  St. 
Pierre  of  Louvain  was  only  the  central  portion  of 
a  triptych  of  which  one  wing  was  in  Berlin  and 
the  other  in  the  Pinakothek  at  Munich.  Another 
famous  pictiire,  "  The  Descent  from  the  Cross," 
attributed  to  Roger  van  der  Weyden,  hung  in 
one  of  the  chapels  of  the  ambulatory.  But  pic- 
tiires  were  not  alone  the  wealth  of  St.  Pierre  of 
Louvain.  A  famous  object  was  the  great  stone 
tabernacle  of  St.  Peter,  40ft.  high,  exquisitely 
carved  by  Matthew  de  Lay  ens  (who   built  the 


> 


306 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


LOUVAIN. 
Sanctuary  of  the  Cathedral.    A  Priest  is  seen  standing  by  the  ruins  of  the  Altar.    [Th4  sp)ur» 


town  hall).  The  carved  wooden  rood-screen ' 
with  the  STormounting  figures  and  cross  was  one 
of  the  most  renowned  in  Belgium,  or  in  Europe  ; 
and  there  was  a  font,  of  cast  bronze  superbly 
worked,  which  was  commonly  said  to  be  the  work 
of  Quentin  Matsys  himself.  The  church  of  St. 
Pierre,  though  the  noblest,  w£is  not  the  only 
church  in  Louvain.  There  was  St.  Jacques,  a 
fine  15th-century  building,  noteworthy  for  its 
reliquaries  of  St.  James,  St.  Margaret,  and  St. 
Hubert,  its  Gothic  tabernacle  in  stone  with  a 
wonderful  brass  balustrade  in  the  style  of  the 
Flemish  Renaissance,  and  a  painting  of  St. 
Hubert  by  De  Grayer.  Close  by  stands  the 
statue  of  Father  Damien,  the  Belgian  missionary 
who  gave  his  life  for  the  lepers.  There  was  the 
14th-centtiry  church  of  St.  Gertrude,  with  its 
lofty  tower  and  its  magnificently  elaborate  choir 
stalls  of  the  16th  century  by  Mathias  de  Wayer  ; 
and  there  was  the  almost  fantastically  baroque 
Jesuit  church  of  St.  Michsiel. 

Yet  in  Louvain,  for  all  its  churches,  the 
sacred  buildings  gave  place  to  the  secular. 
The  Town  Hall  of  Louvain  is  (and  it  seems 
almost  miraculous  that  it  can  still  be  spoken  of 
as  existing)  one  of  the  most  extraordinary 
productions  of  the  hiiman  genius  ever  created. 
Its  towering  walls  speak  of  the  pride  of 
the  wealthy  town  which  in  the  middle  of  the 


15th  centviry  entrusted  the  design  of  its  official 
centre  to  Matthew  de  Layens.  Its  statues 
speak  of  the  citizens'  active  religious  faith. 
"  AU  the  Bible,"  says  Camille  Lemonnier, 
"  files  past ;  you  may  follow  from  niche  to 
niche  the  principal  episodes  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  the  naif  scvilptor,  to  make  his  story 
the  easier  understood,  has  given  the  characters 
the  aspect  of  men  and  women  of  his  own  time." 
The  riot  of  carving  which  covers  every  inch  of 
the  walls,  the  steep  roof  and  lofty  fretted 
pinnacles,  the  elaborate  windows,  speak  of  the 
full  and  many-sided  life  of  hard-working, 
wealthy,  and  comfortable  people,  while  here  and 
there  breaks  out  a  lively  humour.  "  The  building 
resembles  a  vast,  joyous  chronicle  where  many  a 
contemporary  could  see  himself  sculptured  from 
the  life  ;  and  the  gaiety  breaks  out  now  and 
then  into  licence — a  Rabelaisian  commentary  on 
the  vast  satire."  Dierck  Bouts  designed  two 
paintings  for  the  Co\ancil  Room  ;  and  the  works 
of  art  in  the  Town  Hall  included  two  triptychs 
by  the  Louvain  master,  Jan  van  Rilleiert  the 
Elder. 

But  even  the  Town  Hall  of  Louvain  was 
eclipsed  by  another  centre  of  interest — the 
buildings  of  the  famous  University.  Originally 
the  Cloth  Hall,  this  beautiful  edifice  was  made 
over  to  the  University  in  the  first  hetlf  of  the 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


307 


15th  centtory.  For,  as  Louvain  declined  in 
commercial  eminence  after  the  vengeance  of 
Duke  Wenceslas,  she  rose  to  fame  in  another 
direction.  She  became  the  most  famous 
university  town  in  Europe  next  to  Paris — 
the  "Athens  of  Belgium,"  as  she  was  called 
by  one  of  her  professors,  who  was  also  one 
of  the  greatest  scholars  the  world  has  ever  seen, 
Justus  Lipsius.  The  University  was  founded 
in  1425  by  Pope  Martin  V.,  and  Duke  John  IV. 
of  Brabant,  one  of  a  line  of  princes  whose  court 
was  always  associated  with  a  love  of  French  and 
Latin  poetry.  In  1431  it  moved  into  the  Cloth 
Hall.  Yet,  founded  as  it  was  by  a  Pope  and  a 
Prince,  the  University  of  Louvain  owed  yet 
more  to  "  the  educational  and  intellectual 
strength  of  the  schools  of  the  Brethren  of  the 
Common  Life,"  and,  eis  Prof.  Foster  Watson  has 
written,  "as    in  art,  so  in  intellectual  cultvire, 


Belgium  traces  its  origin  to  native,  not  to 
Italian,  sources."  The  University  of  Louvain 
produced  or  employed  a  large  number  of 
famous  humanists,  who  had  a  peculiarly  close 
connexion  with  England.  One  of  these  was 
Jerome  de  Busleiden,  who  studied  law  at  Lou- 
vain, and  was  appointed  Councillor  of  State 
and  Master  of  Requests.  He  came  to  England 
to  offer  the  congratulations  of  his  nation  on  the 
accession  of  Henry  VIII.  ;  and  here,  perhaps, 
he  made  the  acquaintance  of  Sir  Thomas 
More.  In  1516  More  wrote  an  account  of  a  visit 
that  he  paid  to  Busleiden  in  Louvain  while  the 
English  statesman  was  on  a  mission  in  Flanders. 
More  found  in  Busleiden's  house  an  organ, 
which  delighted  his  musical  heait  ;  be  praises 
his  great  library  and  his  mind  that  wa.>  even 
better  stocked  than  his  library  ;  his  wonderfiil 
ooUection    of    Roman   medals,    his    sculptures, 


THE  LAST  SUPPER,  by  Dierck  Bouts. 
In  the  Church  of  St.  Pierre,  Louvain. 


[ManseUGrCo. 


308 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


paintings,  and  carvings.  Prof.  Foster  Watson  sug- 
gests that  More's  own  famous  house  at  Chelsea 
was  built  and  adorned,  in  its  more  modest  way, 
with  Bvisleiden's  mansion  at  the  background  of 
More's  memory.  Then  there  was  Peter  Gilles, 
or  Giles,  of  peculiar  interest  to  English  people, 
because  it  was  in  conversation  with  him  that 
More  saw  first  the  seafaring  man,  Raphael 
Hythloday,  formerly  the  companion  of  Amerigo 
Vespucci,  into  whose  mouth  More  put  the 
"idle  talk"  of  the  "Utopia."  It  was  Gilles 
who  gave  More  the  Utopian  alphabet,  and  the 
"  four  verses  in  the  Utopian  tongue."  And  it 
was  Gilles  who  wrote  to  Busleiden  of  More  as 
"  the  singular  ornament  of  this  our  age,  as  you 
yourself  (right  honourable  Busleiden)  can  witness, 
to  whom  he  is  perfectly  well  known."  Further 
yet ;  it  was  in  the  hands  of  Peter  Gilles  that  More 
put  the  "  Utopia  "  for  publication  ;  and  after 
consultation  between  Gilles  and  Erasmus,  who 
WM  much  at  Louvain,  it  was  to  a  famous  Louvain 
bookseller,  Thierry  Martens,  that  the  production 
of  the  book  was  entrusted.  It  was  a  Louvain 
artist,  the  great  Quentin  Matsys,  who  painted 


a  portrait  of  Erasmus,  and  in  the  picture  with 
him.  was  Peter  Gilles,  holding  in  his  hand  a 
letter  from  Sir  Thomas  More.  The  pictvire  was 
sent  to  More  9S,  a  present,  and  passed  in  time  to 
the  collection  of  Charles  I.  ;  since  the  dissipation 
of  which  it  has  been  lost  to  knowledge.  "  In 
the  friendship  of  Thomas  More  with  Erasmus 
and  Gilles,"  writes  Prof.  Foster  Watson,"  English 
and  Belgian  hximanism  were  united,  and  this 
union  was  typified  and  cemented  in  their  common 
delight  in  the  visions  of  the  longed-for  ideal 
Commonwealth."  And  it  was  Louvain,  the 
august  and  hallowed  birthplace  of  these  dreams 
of  an  ideal  state  of  mankind,  that  the  Huns  of 
the  20th  century  chose  for  destruction. 
•  The  bookshops  of  Louvain,  that  great  city 
of  learning,  were  famous,  and  often  must  Eras- 
mus and  other  great  scholars  have  visited  that 
of  Martens,  which  was  the  most  famous  of  all, 
Thierry  Martens  was  the  successor  of  the  earliest 
of  printers  in  Belgium,  John  of  Westphalia. 
He  printed,  among  other  well-known  works,  the 
*'  Enchiridion  Militis  Christiaai  "  of  Erasmus  ; 
and,    by    a    strange    coincidence,      he     issued 


ManseUQrQo.}        THE    MARTYRDOM  OF  ST.  ERASMUS,  by  Dierck  Bouts.       [MedUiSocitty  Ui, 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


309 


LOUVAIN. 
Ruins  of  the  Vestibule  of  the  Library. 


[Newspaper  llluslra'.ions. 


the  same  author's  "  Bellum,"  of  which  it  has 
been  said  that  it  is  "a  soul-stirring  protest 
against  war,  a  contribution  to  real  progress,  for 
which  the  world  will  yet  thank  Erasmus,  and 
will  look  to  Louvain  also  with  gratitude  as  his 
home  of  the  time." 

Louvain  has  often  been  called  "  the  Oxford 
of  the  Low  Countries  "  ;  and  in  one  respect 
especially  it  resembled  the  great  English  Uni- 
versity. It  was  made  up  of  a  niimber  of  separate 
colleges  attached  to  a  central  order.  Indeed 
in  this  respect  Louvain  was  actually  ahead  of 
her  intimate  sister -university  ;  she  had  more 
colleges  than  Oxford.  In  the  18th  century 
Louvain  had  42  to  Oxford's  18.  The  first  of 
these  came  into  being  as  the  result  of  the  will 
of  Jerome  de  Busleiden,  who  left  money  for  the 
teaching  of  Latin,  Greek,  and  Hebrew.  The 
Latin  of  the  University  Professors  was  not  pure 
Latin,  but  the  jargon  of  the  medieval  school- 
men, endlessly  engaging  in  disputations  on 
theology  in  a  peculiarly  corrupt  form  of  the 
tongue.  And  so  the  executors  of  Busleiden' s 
will  found  it  advisable  to  found  a  special  college 
where  Latin  and  Greek  should  be  taught  pro- 
perly and  Hebrew  should  also  be  in  the  curri- 
culum. This  College,  named  the  College  of  the 
Three  Languages,  was  opened  on  September  1, 
1518,  and  Erasmus  agreed  to  become  the 
supervisor.  Thus  "  the  'prince  of  literary 
Europe  '  directed  the  scholars  of  the  future, 
and  he  directed  them — from  Louvain." 


Among  the  famous  men  of  the  College  who 
maintained  the  intimate  connexion  of  TiOuvain 
with  England  was  Adrian  Barland,  the  great 
Latinist,  who  visited  our  country.  To  Justus 
Lipsius,  one  of  the  most  eminent  philologists 
that  the  world  has  ever  produced,  a  statue  was 
erected  but  a  few  years  ago  near  the  station  at 
Louvain  ;  he  is  well  known  to  many  English 
people,  if  for  no  other  reason,  on  account  of  the 
sly  joke  which  Sterne  permitted  My  Uncle 
Toby  to  make  upon  him  in  "  Tristram  Shandy." 
Two  Englishmen,  Robert  Wakefield,  of  Cam- 
bridge, and  Robert  Shirwood,  of  Oxford,  were 
successively  professors  of  Hebrew  at  Louvain. 
Juan  Luis  Vives,  a  Spaniard,  lectured  for  part  of 
the  year  at  Oxford,  where  he  had  rooms  in 
Corpiis  Christi  College,  then  lately  founded  by 
Bishop  Foxe,  and  part  of  the  year  at  Louvain  ; 
and  it  was  from  a  book  by  Vives,  called  "  De 
Consultationo,"  that  Ben  Jonson  took  many 
passages  in  his  "  Timber."  Among  other  great 
men  of  Louvain  were  Dodoens,  the  botanist, 
a  native  of  Malines,  Mercator,  the  geographer, 
van  Helmont,  the  chemist,  and  Andreas  Vesa- 
lius,  the  founder  of  modern  anatomy.  And  all 
these  men  loved  Louvain  well.  "  Hail,  our 
Athens,  the  Athens  of  Belgium,  O  faithful, 
fruitful  seat  of  the  arts,  shedding  far  and  wide 
thy  light  and  thy  name " — so  sang  Justus 
Lipsius.  Erasmus  dwelt  upon  the  delicious 
skies  and  the  quiet  for  study.  Vives  says  that 
there  "  all  things  are  full  of  love  and  charm," 


310 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


LOUVAIN. 
The  old  Church  of  St.  Pierre  before  its  destruction. 


[Central  News. 


Clenard,  ardently  prosecuting  in  Spain  and  in 
Africa  the  study  of  languages,  longs  for  "  sweet 
Louvain."  But  the  mere  pleastu-e  of  physical 
surroundings  does  not  explain  their  enthusiasm. 
So  writes  Prof.  Foster  Watson  in  an  article  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century  for  October,  1914,  to  which 
we  have  been  deeply  indebted  for  information ; 
and  he  continues  thus  : — 

"  It  was  the  ideal  element  in  life,  the  saving  of 
the  soul  by  losing  it  in  something  greater  than 
itself  that  stirred  the  humanists — Erasmus 
seeking  in  his  scriptural  and  classical  studies 
a  method  of  criticism  and  research  which  should 
lead  to  historical  truth  ;  Vives  aiming  at  social 
amelioration  by  a  reasoned  method  of  poor  relief ; 
Vesalius  bent  on  establishing  habits  of  exact 
observation  in  anatomy  ;  and  Clenard  intent 
upon  applying  linguistic  studies  for  the  up- 
raising of  Eastern  thought  and  life.  These 
high  and  broad  aims  of  the  inner  life  became 
as  real  as  the  marvels  of  the  discovery  of  the 
New  World  geographically.  These  things  entered 
into  the  '  study  of  imagination  '  of  the  human- 
ists, and  were  the  deeper  sources  of  the  active 
joy  which  they  ascribed  to  the  physical 
charms  of  Louvain,  for  it  was  the  atmosphere 
in  which  their  inspirations  had  come  to 
them." 


Since  those  great  and  lofty  days  of  the 
Renaissance  of  learning,  in  which  Belgium,  as 
we  have  seen,  played  her  part,  the  career  of  the 
University  of  Louvain  had  not  been  unchequered. 
The  Emperor  Joseph  II.  of  Austria,  in  the  course 
of  his  long  quarrel  with  his  subjects  of  the  Low 
Countries,  closed  the  university.  Reopened  later, 
it  became  the  only  road  to  public  appointments 
in  the  Austrian  Netherlands.  The  French  closed 
it  again  in  1797  ;  but  in  1817  it  was  opened  once 
more  by  the  Dutch  during  the  Union.  In  1834, 
after  the  separation  of  the  two  kingdoms  of 
Belgium  and  Holland,  the  State  ceased  to  control 
the  University,  and  it  had  since  been  maintained 
by  the  Belgian  bishops  as  a  Catholic  Univer- 
sity. The  University  of  Louvain  was  therefore 
the  headquarters  of  religious  education  in  the 
most  Catholic  country  in  Europe,  and  as  such 
it  maintained  the  tradition  of  its  long  and 
honourable  past. 

Such  was  the  atmosphere  and  the  spirit — an 
atmosphere  of  learning  in  a  quiet  old  town,  the 
spirit  of  culture  and  peace — upon  which  on  that 
Tuesday  evening  in  August  broke  all  the  din 
and  devastation,  all  the  rapine  and  savagery,  of 
the  hordes  of  modem  Huns.  It  is  time  to 
turn  to  the  narrative  of  what  the  Prime  Minister 
of  Great  Britain  called   "  the  greatest  crinae 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAS. 


311 


against    civilization    and    culture    since    the 
Thirty  Years'  War." 

The  destruction  was  not  accidental,  nor  the 
result  of  shell-fire.  It  was  systematically  and 
deliberately  carried  out  by  German  soldiers 
provided  with  special  appliances  for  the  purpose. 
The  name  of  the  officer  who  gave  the  order  w£is 
Major  von  Manteuffel,  who,  about  the  end  of 
September,  was  superseded  in  his  command, 
possibly  as  the  resiilt  of  an  official  inqiiiry  into 
the  atrocities  committed  by  the  German  troops. 
The  Germans  first  pleaded  in  defence  of  their 
action  that  their  troops  had  been  engaged  in  a 
conflict  with  the  inhabitants  for  24  hours,  and 
that  the  town  had  been  damaged  in  the  course  of 
this  fight.  It  was  proved,  however,  that  before 
the  invaders'  entry  of  the  undefended  town 
the  Civic  Guard  had  been  disarmed  and  a 
thorough  search  made  among  the  inhabitants 
for  all  weapons,  ancient  or  modern.  The  next 
excuse  was  that  the  son  of  the  Burgomaster 
had  fired  on  the  Chief  of  Staff  of  the 
General  conunanding  Louvain,  and  this  had  been 
a  signal  for  the  civic  guard  of  Louvain  to  fire 
at  the  soldiers,  50  Germans  being  killed  or 
wotinded.  The  same  objection  answers  this 
excuse  as  the  preceding  plea.  A  more  probable 
account  of  the  affair  is  this.     A  body  of  German 


soldiers  driven  out  of  Malines  by  the  Belgians 
fell  back  upon  Louvain.  Of  their  comrades, 
already  in  the  town  of  Louvain,  many  by  this 
time  were  very  drunk,  since  the  German  sol- 
dier, looting  the  choice  cellars  of  a  people  with  a 
fine  taste  in  good  wine,  had  been,  here  as  else- 
where, swilling  Burgtmdy  as  if  it  were  beer. 
Mistaking  the  arrival  of  their  fugitive  fellows 
for  an  attack  by  the  Belgian  troops,  the  drunk- 
ards fired  upon  their  own  men.  The  mistake 
had  to  be  covered  up  at  all  costs  ;  and  the  cost  in 
this  case  was  the  burning  of  the  town.  Numbers 
of  the  male  inhabitants  were  driven  away  and 
shot.  An  eye-witness,  who  was  among  those 
threatened  with  death,  gave  the  following 
account  of  his  experiences  : — 

At  6  o'clock,  when  everything  was  ready  for  dinner, 
alarm  signals  sounded,  and  the  soldiers  rushed  into  the 
streets  ;  shots  whistled  through  the  air,  cries  and 
groans  arose  on  all  sides,  but  we  did  not  dare  leave 
our  house,  and  took  refuge  in  the  cellar,  where  we 
stayed  through  long  and  fearful  hours. 

At  break  of  day  I  crawled  from  the  cellar  to  the 
street  door,  and  saw  nothing  but  a  raging  sea  of  fire. 
At  9  o'clock  the  shooting  diminished,  and  we  resolved 
to  make  a  dash  to  the  station.  Abandoning  our  home 
and  all  our  goods  except  what  we  could  carry,  and 
taking  all  the  money  we  had,  we  rushed  out.  What 
we  saw  on  our  way  to  the  station  is  hardly  describable. 
Everything  was  burning ;  the  streets  were  covered 
with  bodies  shot  dead  and  half  burnt.  Everywhere 
proclamations   had   been   posted     summoning   every 


LOUVAIN. 
The  Church  of  St.  Pierre  as  the  Germans  left  it.    The  Hotel  de  Ville  on  the  right 

was  practically  uninjured.  [Newspaper  niusfralions. 


312 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR, 


man  to  assist  in  quenching  the  flames  and  the  women 
and  children  to  stay  inside  the  houses. 

The  station  was  crowded  with  fugitives,  and  I  was 
just  trying  to  show  an  officer  my  legitimation  papers 
when  the  soldiers  separated  me  from  my  wife  and 
children.  All  protests  were  useless,  and  a  lot  of  us 
were  marched  off  to  a  big  shed  in  the  goods  yard, 
from  where  we  could  see  the  finest  buildings  of  the  city, 
the  most  beautiful  historical  monuments,  being  burned 
down. 

Shortly  afterwards  German  soldiers  drove  before 
them  300  men  and  lads  to  the  corner  of  the  Boulevard 
van  Tienen  and  the  Maria  Theresa-street,  opposite  the 
Cafe  Vermalen.  There  they  were  shot.  The  sight 
filled  us  with  horror.  The  Burgomaster,  two  magis- 
trates, the  Rector  of  the  University,  and  all  police 
officials  had  been  shot  already. 

With  our  hands  bound  behind  our  backs  we  were 
•  then  marched  off  by  the  soldiers,  still  without  having 
seen  our  wives  or  children.  We  went  through  the 
Juste  de  Lipse-street,  along  the  Diest  Boulevard, 
across  the  Vaart,  and  up  the  hill.  From  the  Mont 
CJesar  we  had  a  full  view  of  the  burning  town,  St. 
Peter  in  fiames,  while  the  troops  incessantly  sent  shot 
after  shot  into  the  unfortunate  town. 

The  soldiers  worked  at  the  incendiarism 
methodically.  They  began  at  the  heart  of  the 
city  and  worked  down  to  the  outskirts,  taking 
street  by  street  and  house  by  house.  They 
went  into  the  houses,  churches,  and  shops, 
gathered  the  goods  or  furniture  together,  and 
when  they  saw  that  all  was  well  alight  passed 
on  to  the  next  building.  There  was  no  opposi- 
tion from  the  inhabitants,  who  had  either 
been  driven  away  or  were  too  terrified  even  to 
protest.  The  firing  of  houses  went  on  steadily 
for  36  hours  or  more. 

The  district  most  thoroughly  wiped  out  was 
that  in  which  were  situated  the  university,  the 
library,  and  the  church  of  St.  Pierre.  It  was 
at  first  reported  that  the  famous  Town  Hall 
had  been  destroyed.  Later  it  was  learned  that 
the  Germans  themselves  had  prevented  the 
flames  from  attacking  it,  and  that  the  exterior 
at  least  remains  uninjured,  though  it  stands 
amid  a  waste  of  desolation  and  blackened 
rmns,  while  the  interior  was  much  injured. 
The  damage  to  St.  Peter's  Church  was  not 
altogether  irreparable,  though  the  marvellous 
iind  exquisite  rood-screen  was  destroyed ;  and 
its  pictures  were  rescued  by  the  soldiers — for 
subsequent  transport,  no  doubt,  to  Berlin.  A 
famous  early  16th-century  house  in  the  Rue  de 
Namur  was  utterly  wrecked.  As  to  the  Univer- 
sity, a  university  cannot  be  burned.  It  is  not 
a  matter  of  buildings  and  works  of  art,  it  is  a 
thing  of  the  spirit,  an  organization,  an  ideal ; 
and  the  University  of  Louvain,  helped  no  doubt 
by  her  sister  universities  in  other  countries, 
some  of  whom  immediately  hastened  to  offer 
their  hospitality  to  the  survivors  among  her 
professors  and  students,  may  be  confidently 
expected  to  rise  again  from  this  the  most 
dastardly  and  the  heaviest  blow  that  has  ever 


fallen  upon  her.     But  the  University  of  Louvain 
must  for  the  futtire  do  without  the  famous  old 
btiilding  in  which  her  headquarters  had  been 
established    for    nearly    500    years.     The    old 
"  Halles,"   the  Cloth  Hall,  of  Louvain,  a  noble 
building  in  the  severer  form   of   Gothic,   was 
totally  destroyed.     True,  it  had  not  survived  in 
its     pristine  form  and  beauty.     Towards  the 
close  of  the  17th  century  an  upper  storey  was 
added,  and  the  interior  had  been  much  altered 
in  order  to  adapt  it  to  the  purposes  of  a  univer- 
sity.    But  there  remained,  until  the  Grermans 
came,  the  wonderful   Romanesque  arches  and 
pillars   in    the    great    hall,    or    Salle  des   Pas- 
Perdus,   and   much   else   of    architectural    and 
artistic      beauty.       "  Notliing      could      better 
indicate,"    writes    Camille    Lemonnier,      "  the 
power    of    this    citadel     of      scholarship  than 
the    scope  and  amplitude  of  its  installations  ; 
the    vesture     of     long     accumulated     wealth, 
nurtured    into    spreading  bloom  by  privileges, 
which     enabled     the     university     to      prosper 
in     the    midst    of     the  most    cruel    torments. 
Large  and  spacious  courts,  imposing  buildings, 
a  succession  of  vast  halls,  monumental  stair- 
oases,  suggesting  the  palace  of  a  prelate  luxuri- 
ously lodged  in  the  midst  of  all  the  conveniences 
of  life.     Here,    one  feels,   a   sovereign  master 
reigns  over  stone  and  intellect,  equally  subser- 
vient to  his  will ;  and,  in  fact,  the  Rector  main- 
tains complete  jurisdiction  over  all  the  members 
of   the   university."      The   pillars    alone    were 
left   standing.    The  laboratories,   the  museum, 
the    woikshops,    all     the    equipment    of    tliis 
seat  of   learning,   wore   destroyed.     Even  this 
however,  pales   before   the   entire  loss   of   the 
great   library   of   the   University   of    Louvain, 
"  the  arsenal  of  the  great  institution,"  a  library 
smaller,    indeed,    than    the    Bodleian    or     the 
British  Museum,  but  yet  a  library  famous  all 
over  the  world,  and  one  of  the  finest  in  Europe. 
Founded    by  Canon  Beyerlinck,  continued  by 
Cornelius     Janssens,    Pierre     Stockmans,    and 
Jacques   Boonen,   Archbishop    of  Malines,   the 
library    of   Louvain   University  had   been    the 
recipient   through    centuries     of    treasures     of 
learning  books,  manuscripts,  incunabula,  in  all 
amounting  to  more  than    100,000   in    number 
and  including  priceless  and  unique  things  that 
can   never   be   replaced.      A   Professor  of   the 
University,  standing   in   his   garden   hard   by, 
saw,  floating   past    him    on   the    summer    air, 
charred     fragments     of     priceless    illuminated 
manuscripts.      He   could   do    nothing   to   save 
them.    The  loss  is  irreparable.     Learning  must 
suffer  for  it  so  long  as  the  world  endures.     And 
the  destruction  was  carried   out  in  the  name 
of  Culture, 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


313 


DESTRUCTION    OF    LOUVAIN.  [Central  News. 

A  photograph  of  Louvain  before  the  German  devastation  will  be  found  on  page  104  of  this  volume. 

After  Louvain,  Malines.     Malines,  or  Mechlin, 


as  it  was  known  to  the  English  in  the  past,  and 
especially  to  the  ladies  and  gallants  who  bought 
the  favourite  Mechlin  lace,  is  a  town  of  very 
great  antiquity  and  historical  interest,  and  was 
a  town  of  great  charm  and  beauty.  It  was  a 
capital  before  Brussels.  Towards  the  close  of 
the  15th  century  Malines  became  the  seat 
of  the  Provincial  Court  or  Great  Council, 
the     supreme     tribunal     of     the  Netherlands. 


It  was  to  Malines  that  Margaret  of  York 
moved  her  seat  after  the  death  of  her  husband, 
Charles  the  Bold,  and  here  were  educated  Philippe 
le  Bel  and  Margaret  of  Austria,  the  famous 
Regent  of  the  Netherlands.  Margaret's  successor 
transferred  her  residence  to  Brussels  in  the  middle 
of  the  16th  centiuy,  and  shortly  afterwards 
Malines,  which  had  previously  been  in  the  ec- 
clesiastical diocese  of  Cambrai,  was  made  the  seat 
of  the  Archbishopric,  a  dignity  which  it  still  held. 


> 


314 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR, 


LOUVAIN. 
Destruction  in  the  Rue  de  Namur. 


[Central  News. 


Round  the  railway  statidn  of  Malines  was 
always  activity  and  bustle,  for  here  was  a  great 
junction  of  three  lines  of  the  excellent  Belgian 
railway  system,  and  here,  also,  were  railway 
workshops  and  factories.  On  the  Dyle,  too, 
which  winds  through  the  town,  there  was  in  times 
of  peekce  a  modest  amount  of  quiet  shipping  in 
progress  under  the  bridges,  along  the  quays,  and 
between  the  tall  gabled  houses.  Everywhere  else 
in  Malines  there  was  the  quiet  of  a  city  which  had 
seen  her  great  days  go  by  and  lived  only  in  the 
dreanxs  of  the  past.  Once  a  gay  and  luxiirious 
town,  she  was  scarcely  more  than  a  memory, 
save  for  the  buildings  that  bore  witness  to  her 
ancient  splendoiir  and  the  rich  life  that  teemed 
within  her  walls.  The  centre  of  the  town  and 
the  town's  life  was,  as  in  all  old  Belgian  cities,  the 
Grand'  Place.  Here  stood  the  large  and  sombre 
Halles  or  Cloth  Hall,  rebuilt  in  the  early  part  of 
the  14th  centviry  on  the  model  of  the  Halles  of 
Bruges,  with  a  later  and  unfinished  belfry  and  a 
1 6th  century  north  wing  that  was  never  com- 
pleted. Here,  too,  stood  the  Gothic  house,  the 
Schepenhuis,  or  Vieux  Palais  of  the  14th  cen- 
tury, where  for  a  century  and  a  half  the  Great 
Council  used  to  sit,  and  where  lately  were  kept 
the  city  archives  and  the  Ubrary  of  Malines ; 
euid  the  Town  Hall,  a  much  restored  and  unin- 
teresting  building.     A   statue   of    the   town's 


great  patroness,  Margaret  of  Austria,  stood  in 
the  centre,  and  all  round  were  charming  old 
houses.  But  in  the  Grand'  Place  of  Malines  it 
was  always  difficult  to  look  about,  so  engrossed 
were  the  eyes  and  the  mind  by  one  object — the 
immense  and  lovely  fabric  of  the  great  Cathedral 
of  St.  Rombaut.  To  turn  from  the  street  into 
the  Grand'  Place,  however  well  one  might  know 
what  to  expect,  was  always  to  be  arrested  with 
a  shock  of  delight  at  the  spectacle  of  the  enor- 
mous tower  flinging  itself  mightily  into  the  sky. 
And  yet  that  tower  was  little  more  than  half 
what  its  15th  century  bmlders  intended  it  to  be. 
Within  the  cathedral  used  to  stand  a  model  of 
the  chvirch  with  the  tower  as  it  was  to  have  been ; 
a  springing  mass,  colossal  yet  exquisitely  grace- 
ful, 550ft.  in  height.  Could  it  have  looked 
nobler  than  the  vmfinished  tower  that  was  the 
pride  of  Malines  ?  This  tower  was  the  home 
of  one  of  the  most  famous  and  beautiful  of 
all  those  carillons,  or  sets  of  chimes,  which  are 
among  the  chief  attractions  of  the  Belgian  towns. 
The  carillon  of  St.  Rombaut  was  the  rival  of 
that  of  Bruges,  and  nothing  more  exquisite 
in  the  sound  of  bells  can  be  imagined  than  the 
music  that  came  from  this  mighty  tower  on 
sinnmer  evenings.  The  church,  which  was  very 
largely  built  out  of  the  offerings  of  the  myriads 
of  pilgrims  to  Malines,  where  indulgencies  were 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


315 


to  be  obtained,  was  begun  late  in  the  13th  cen- 
tury, and  finished  early  in  the  14th  ;  but  a  fire 
in  1342  compelled  the  rebuilding  of  a  great  deal 
of  it,  and  subsequent  centuries  saw  still  further 
changes.  It  was  cruciform  in  shape,  with  a  high- 
pitched  roof  and  many  elaborate  pinnacles — 
a  noble  building,  entirely  worthy  of  its  high 
position  as  the  archiepiscopal  metropolitan 
church  of  the  Low  Countries. 

And  within  it  was  more  full  of  glories  than  any 
church  in  Belgium,  save  perhaps  Ste.  Gudiile 
at  Brvissels  and  the  Cathedral  of  Antwerp. 
Behind  the  massive  pillars  of  the  huge  nave  lay 
a  profusion  of  chapels  ;  and  the  whole  cathedral 
was  rich  in  carved  doorways,  tombs,  statiies, 
pictures,  painted  glass,  altars,  tabernacles,  stalls, 
marble  and  metal.  An  object  rather  extraordi- 
nary than  beautifiil  was  the  famous  "  Chaire  de 
V6rit6  "  or  pulpit,  a  work  of  the  early  18th' cen- 
tury, designed  by  Michael  Vervoort,  of  Antwerp, 
an  immense  and  very  elaborately  carved  struc- 
ture of  wood,  with  tree  trunks  and  foliage  twin- 
ing up  the  shaft  to  break  in  ebullience  at  the 
top,  while  the  base  consisted  of  a  representation 
of  the  .conversion  of  St.  Norbert,  who  was  seen 
falling  from  his  horse  at  the  spectacle  of  the 
Crucified  towering  above  him,  with  the   holy 


women  at  the  foot  of  the  Cross.  Amid  the 
foliage  appeared  Adam  and  Eve,  the  latter 
just  raising  her  hand  to  take  the  apple  from  the 
serpent's  mouth.  But  the  chief  glory  of  the 
interior  of  St.  Rombaut  lay  in  its 
pictures.  There  were,  as  usual  in  Catho- 
lic cathedrals,  a  vast  ntunber  of  paintings  of 
inferior  artistic  merit ;  but  St.  Rombaut's  was 
the  possessor  of  a  Van  Dyck  of  surpassing 
beauty,  a  "  Crucifixion,"  painted  in  1627, 
in  which  the  colour  is  superb,  the  dramatic 
contrasts  are  powerful,  and  the  gradations  of 
grief  in  the  chief  personages  and  in  the  crowd 
of  spectators  is  finely  observed. 

There  were  other  churches  in  Malines  with 
proud  claims  to  distinction.  The  15th-century 
church  of  St.  Jean  contained,  besides  some 
notable  carved  woodwork  in  pulpit  (representing 
the  Good  Shepherd),  high  altar  and  confes- 
sionals by  Verhaeghen,  a  famous  picture  by 
Rubens  of  "  The  Adoration  of  the  Magi,"  which 
hung  above  Verhaeghen' s  altar.  Painted  in 
1617,  this  was  one  of  the  master's  finest  works. 
Not  to  speak  of  its  superb  colour,  on  which 
Rubens  lavished  all  the  pomp  of  his  glowing 
palette,  the  picture  shows  his  unique  power 
over    the    artistic    representation    of    various 


LOUVAIN. 
Remains  of  part>of  the  University  buildings. 


IFarringdon  Photo  Co* 


31fi 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


LOUVAIN. 
Interior  of  the  famous  Library  before  its  destruction. 


The  Sphere, 


moods  and  sides  of  life.  The  smDe  on  the  face 
of  the  Virgin  seems  to  create  the  whole 
atmosphere  of  the  miain  subject.  One  of  the 
volets  shows  the  beheading  of  St,  Jolin  the 
Baptist,  the  other  the  martyrdom,  in  a  cauldron 
of  boiling  oil,  of  St.  John  the  Evangelist ;  and 
the  palm-bearing  angels  who  fill  the  sky  in  the 
lattei;  subject  cannot  detract  from  the  horror 
of  the  execution.  On  the  outside  of  the  shutters 
are  the  Baptism  of  Christ,  and  St.  John  writing 
the  Revelations  in  the  island  of  Patmos.  The 
picture,  as  were  most  of  Rubens's  works,  was 
very  rapidly  painted.  The  parish  of  St.  John 
gave  him  the  commission  at  Christmas,  1616  ; 
the  picture  was  in  position  in  September,  1617, 
though  Rubens  paid  several  visits  to  Malines 
to  put  finishing  touches  to  it  on  the  spot. 

Rubens  was  to  be  seen  at  his  noblest  again 
in  another  church,  of  Malines — the  church  of 
N6tre-Dame  au  dela  de  la  Dyle,  the  church  of 
the  Boatmen  of  Malines,  whose  guild  did  much 


for  its  ornamentation.  This  was  the  church 
which  the  Guild  of  the  Fishmongers  chose  for 
their  gift  of  a  picture  by  Rubens,  choosing  an 
appropriate  subject,  "  The  Miraculous  Draught 
of  Fishes,"  ajid  commissioning  the  work  in 
1618.  Never,  perhaps,  did  the  brush  of  Rubens 
achieve  a  finer  work  than  the  head  of  the  figure 
of  Christ,  Who,  standing  at  the  edge  of  the  boat, 
watched  His  disciples  haul  ashore  their  teeming 
nets.  The  colour  of  the  whole  was  magnificent, 
and  the  action  was  as  dramatic  and  full  of  move- 
ment as  even  Rubens  could  make  it.  The 
wings  showed  equally  germane  subjects — 
Tobias  and  the  Angel,  St.  Peter  finding  the 
coin  in  the  fish's  mouth,  and  four  fishermen 
saints. 

The  interest  and  beauty  of  Malines,  however, 
was  not  confined  to  its  churches.  The  Palais 
de  Justice  was  formerly  the  residence  of  Mar- 
garet of  Austria,  and  afterwards  of  the  great 
Cardinal  Granvella  ;  and  this  rambling  building 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


317 


round  its  wide  courtyard  combined  in  very- 
interesting  fashion  the  late  Gothic  with  the 
earliest  example  in  Belgium  of  Renaissance 
architecture.  Inside  were  very  handsome 
and  elaborate  chimney-pieces  and  other  works 
of  art.  In  old  houses  of  interest,  indeed, 
Malines  was  particularly  rich.  The  Academy 
of  Music,  where  church  music  had  its  official 
headquarters  in  Belgium,  occupied  part  of  the 
old  house  of  Canon  Busleiden.  Of  the  old 
Keizerhof,  built  by  Margaret  of  York  in  1480, 
and  late  the  residence  of  Philippe  le  Bel  and  of 
Charles  v.,  nothing  remained  except  the  facade. 
But  on  the  Quai  au  Sel  stood  the  well-known 
Maison  du  Saumon,  "  In  den  grooten  Zalm," 
the  guild-house  of  the  Fishmongers,  with  a 
wonderful  Renaissance  front,  the  pillars  and 
carvings  of  which  between  the  lofty  windows 
clearly  betrayed  Italian  influence.  Near  by  was 
the  Lepelaer,  another  fine  16th-century  house ; 
and  on  the  Quai  aux  Avoines  stood  three  re- 
markable old  buildings  together.  The  middle 
one  had  a  tall  and  severe  front,  with  three 
strange  figures  supporting  the  tier  above  the 
door.  This  was  the  Maison  du  Diablo,  or 
"  Duyvolsgevel,"  and  other  grotesque  figures 
carved  in  the  woodwork  helped  to  emphasize 
the  idea.  Next  to  it  at  the  corner  stood  a 
more  elaborate  structure  under  a  lofty  gable 
with  painted  reUefs  representing  Adam  and 
Eve  in  Paradise,  and  the  Expulsion  from 
Paradise.  And  on  the  other  side  of  the  Devil's 
House  stood  a  very  elaborately-ornamented 
house  of  pleasure,  on  which  were  carved  figures 
representing  earthly  joys.  The  list  of  old 
houses  in  Malines  might  be  almost  indefinitely 
extended ;  and  among  the  town's  treasures 
was  the  Grand-Pont,  the  13th  century  bridge 
over  the  Dyle,  and  the  Brussels  Gate,  or  Overste 
Poort,  rebuilt  in  the  17th  century,  and  the 
sole  remaining  out  of  the  twelve  gates  which 
once  gave  ingress  and  egress  through  the  city 
walls.  But  enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  the 
ancient  and  once  proud  city  had  preserved 
sufficient  memorials  of  her  august  past  to  deserve 
the  respect  and  affection  of  all  who  see  in  Culture 
the  understanding  and  care  of  the  future  by 
means  of  the  softening  and  refining  influences  of 
the  ancient  days  and  the  enduring  expressions 
of  the  life,  work,  worship,  and  enjoyment  of 
mankind. 

Malines,  a  treasure-hoxise  of  ancient  memories, 
of  works  of  art,  and  of  peaceful  dignity,  was  an 
undefended,  or  open,  town  ;  yet  it  was  several 
times  bombarded  by  the  German  troops.  The 
first  occasion  was  on  August  27,  in  the  course  of 
the  German  advance  north-west  across  Belgium. 
There  was  no  good  military  reason,  as  it  appears ; 


MALINES. 

Removing  a  picture  by  Van  Dyck  to  a 

place  of  safety. 

for  the  Belgian  forces  lay  between  Willebroeck 
and  Termondei  But  on  this  occasion  the  Town 
Hall  was  reduced  to  ruins,  the  roof  of  the  Cathe- 
dral of  St.  Rombaut  was  broken  up,  large  holes 
were  knocked  in  the  walls  on  one  side,  and  the 
stained  glass  was  all  shattered.  The  population 
almost  immediately  deserted  the  town ;  the 
shops  were  barricaded,  and  upon  Malines,  always 
a  quiet  pla<)e,  there  fell  the  silence  of  death. 
A  second  bombardment,  nevertheless,  was 
thought  necessary  by  the  German  commanders. 
And  this  time  damage  yet  more  serious  was 
ruthlessly  achieved.  Among  the  work  of 
destruction,  shells  fell  upon  the  church  of. 
N6tre-Dame  au  dela  de' la  Dyle.  Fortunately 
the  Belgians,  with  their  usual  care  for  things  of 
interest  and  beauty,  and  their  usual  foresight* 
had  removed  the  famous  Rubens  to  a  place  of 
safety,  as  later  they  removed  other  pictures 
from  Antwerp  Cathedral  and  elsewhere.  On 
September  2  Malines  was  again  bombarded  for 
two  hours.  Nearly  100  shrapnel  shells  exploded 
in  the  defenceless  and  innocuous  town.  This  time 
St.  Rombaut's  suffered  more  seriously  than 
before.  It  was  at  first  reported  to  be  in  ruins, 
though  that,  so  far  as  the  exterior,  at  any  rate, 
was  concerned,  was  an  over -statement.  What  was 
left  of  the  roof  and  windows  was  destroyed ;  and 
the  Germans  cannot  be  acquitted  of  the  charge  of 
deliberately  aiming  at  the  famous  tower,  which, 
of  course,  furnished  them  with  an  excellent 
mark.  The  magnificent  gateway  beneath  it  was 
turned  to  a  heap  of  ruins.  And  now  the  time 
had  come,  too,  for  the  carillon  of  Malines  to 
share  the  fate  of  the  other  things  of  beauty  and 
charm  which  gave  to  the  ancient  archiepiscopal 


318 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


MALINES   CATHEDRAL. 
The  Famous  Carved  Pulpit,  which  has  been 
nearly  destroyed.      [Manseii&Co. 

city  its  cliief  title  to  distinction.  Playing 
upon  the  tower  of  St.  Rombaut,  the  German 
guns  knocked  the  bells  to  pieces,  and  in  a  very 
short  time  they  were  totally  destroyed.  Mean- 
while, the  refugees  from  the  city,  driven  from 
their  ruined  homes,  were  still  struggling  along 
the  roads  towards  Ostend,  with  as  much  of  their 
possessions  as  they  could  contrive  to  carry  with 
them — a  pitifiil  renmant  of  devastated  comfort 
and  peace.  Happily,  forethought  had  been  at 
work.  On  September  14  the  chiefs  of  all 
the  Diplomatic  Missions  then  in  Antwerp 
went  to  Malines  by  motor-car  in  order  to  see  for 
themselves  the  destruction  that  had  been  com- 
mitted and  report  upon  it  to  their  Governments. 
"  Unnecessary  destruction  "  waa  the  temperate 
phrase  in  which  the  wrecking  of  the  defence- 
leas   town   was   described  by   the  responsible 


people  who  saw  it.  Yet  the  Germans  had  not 
finished  with  Malines.  On  September  26  a 
detachment  of  German  troops  was  surprised  on 
its  march  from  Brussels  to  Termonde  through 
Alost.  Attacked  by  the  Belgians  in  front  and 
in  the  flank  the  detachment  fell  back  in  disorder 
upon  Assche,  leaving  many  wounded  and  much 
ammunition  in  the  hands  of  the  victors.  In 
revenge  for  this  (for  no  other  motive  can  be 
assigned  for  the  deed)  the  Germans  on  the 
following  morning  shelled  Malines  with  long- 
distance guns.  It  was  a  Sunday  morning ; 
and  such  few  people  as  had  remained  in 
the  town,  or  had  crept  back  since  the  last 
bombardment,  were  returning  from  Mass  about 
half-past  nine,  when  a  shell  suddenly  fell 
in  the  middle  of  a  group,  killing  several  people. 
The  remainder  fled  to  a  cafe.  Shortly  after- 
wards a  shell  exploded  in  the  cafe  and  several 
more  people  were  wounded.  The  rain  of  shells 
continued,  falling  at  the  rate  of  nearly  one  a 
minute.  The  railway  station  was  early  shelled. 
Shells  fell  in  the  Place  de  la  Gare  and  the  neigh- 
bourhood ;  and  the  fires  then  set  up  consumed 
the  railway  station,  the  barracks,  the  factory 
of  a  cabinet-maker,  the  house  of  the  Little 
Sisters  of  the  Poor,  the  national  stamp  manu- 
factory, and  many  private  houses.  Other 
houses  collapsed  in  the  street,  completely 
blocking  traffic.  If  the  destruction  of  Malines 
was  not  so  thorough-going  as  that  of  Termonde, 
nor,  on  the  whole,  so  disastrous  as  that  of 
Louvain,  it  was  great  enough  to  satisfy  the 
most  exacting  lust  for  havoc.  "  The  Cathedral 
of  St  Rombaut,"  wrote  an  eye-witness,  "  is 
almost  completely  destroyed,  and  the  tower  is 
seriously  injured." 

Meanwhile  the  Kaiser's  modern  Huns  had 
been  spreading  their  peculiar  form  of  "  Kultin* " 
further  afield  over  the  peaceful  and  gallant 
little  country  which  had  done  them  no 
injury.  It  was  early  in  September  that  news 
came  of  the  Germans'  behaviour  in  Aerschot. 
Aerschot  lies  a  few  miles  north  of  Louvain, 
on  the  line  from  Antwerp  to  Maastricht  and 
Aix-la-Chapelle.  It  had  a  fine  Gothic  Church 
of  St.  Sulpice,  chiefly  remarkable  for  its  magnifi- 
cent carved  rood-loft  and  choir  stalls,  15th- 
century  work  of  the  richest  order.  It  was 
this  church  that  the  German  troops  chose  as 
a  stable  for  their  horses  ;  this  carved  woodwork 
that  the  troopers  of  the  advance  movement 
destroyed  in  wanton  insolence.  In  Aerschot, 
as  elsewhere,  houses  were  burned  to  the  ground 
in  revenge  for  some  alleged  shooting  on  the 
part  of  the  inhabitants,  which  was  probably 
the  act  of  drunken  Gorman  soldiers  firing 
their  rifles   in    sport ;    and  in  Aerschot,  the 


TEE    TIMES    HI8T0RY    OF    THE    WAR, 


319 


burgomaster,  his  son,  and  brother  were  shot 
in  the  enforced  presence  of  150  of  the  male 
inhabitants,  and  the  males  of  the  town  were 
forced  to  run  towards  the  river  while  the  Ger- 
mans fired  at  them.  Over  forty  were  killed 
by  this  cultured  form  of  sport. 

We  come  now  to  one  of  the  most  appalling 
of  all  the  crimes  of  vandalism  committed  by 
the  apostles  of  Culture  in  Belgium.  Among  all 
the  ancient  cities  of  Belgium  the  town  of 
Termonde  had  a  charm  peculiarly  its  own. 
Termonde,  or  Dendermonde,  lay  in  the  low 
country  about  half-way  between  Ghent  and 
Malines,  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Scheldt,  and 
both  banks  of  the  Dendre.  Around  it  ran 
fortifications  which  had  been  formidable  in 
their  day.  Louis  XIV.  attempted  to  capture 
the  place  in  1667  ;  the  inhabitants  opened  the 
sluices,  as  the  modern  Belgian  has  proved 
himself  not  afraid  to  do,  and  the  Grand  Mon- 


arque's  army  was  flooded  out.  It  took  Marl- 
borough ten  days'  bombardment  in  a  dry  season 
to  reduce  the  gallant  little  city.  The  central 
beauty  of  Termonde  was  its  Grand  Place,  with 
its  exquisite  and  severe  Town  Hall  and  belfry 
on  one  side,  and  on  another  the  ancient  building 
that  was  once  the  Cloth  Hall  and  was  later 
adapted  to  make  the  town's  museum.  The 
Grand'  Place  of  Termonde  was  small,  but  it 
was  strikingly  beautiful.  Of  the  Town  Hall 
Camille  Lemonnier  well  says :  *'  Certainly  it 
has  nothing  of  the  imposing  solemnity  of  the 
belfry  of  Bruges  ;  but  such  as  it  is,  with  the 
symmetry  of  its  proportions,  the  balance  of  its 
lines,  and  the  delicious  silhouette  that  it  throws 
into  the  air,  it  makes  a  good  appearance  among 
the  other  stone  ancients  of  the  country."  The 
streets  were  smiling  and  comfortable,  giving 
every  evidence  of  ease  and  peace ;  and  on 
one  of  the  cosy-looking  houses  the  curious  might 


MALINES. 

Interior  of  Cathedral  photographed  from  above.    In  the  left  comer  is  one  of  the  manuscript 

notes  of  the  last  sermon  preached  before  the   bombardment  ;    and  a  leaf  from  a  book  on 

the  right,  both  pierced  by  pieces  of  shell.  [Underwood  €r  Underwood, 


> 


320 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


And  the  Market-place; 


SI.   ROMBAUT,   MALINES, 
a  characteristic  view  of  life  as  it  was  in  times  of  peace. 


discern  a  tablet  which  recorded  the  birthplace 
of  a  young  Belgian,  Polydore  de  Keyser,  who 
afterwards  became  Lord  Mayor  of  London  and 
was  knighted  by  Queen  Victoria.  The  Gothic 
church  of  Notre -Dame,  massive  and  somewhat 
gloomy  on  the  exterior,  standing  a  little  aside 
from  the  road  amid  a  bower  of  trees,  was  not 
large,  but  it  had  rare  treasures  within  it.  First 
of  all  might  be  mentioned  the  superb  Roman- 
esque font  dating  from  the  twelfth  century,  and 


surrounding  it  the  severe  and  beautiful  oak 
and  brass-railed  doors,  dated  1635,  which  were 
a  feature  of  the  famous  Brussels  Exhibition. 
But  the  glory  of  the  Church  of  Notre-Dame 
at  Termonde  consisted  in  its  three  great  pictures, 
"  The  Assumption  of  the  Virgin,"  one  of  the 
finest  works  of  that  fine  painter,  De  Grayer, 
who  was  at  one  time  held  to  be  the  only  serious 
rival  of  Rubens,  and  a  "  Crucifixion  "  and  an 
"  Adoration  of  the  Shepherds,"  by  Van  Dyck. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


321 


This  picture  was  apparently  not  destroyed. 
This  painting  of  '  The  Crucifixion  "  is  one  of 
the  best  of  the  master's  sacred  pictures.  At  the 
foot  of  the  cross  are  the  figures  of  St.  Francis 
of  Assisi,  the  Virgin,  and  St.  Mary  Magdalene, 
and  the  whole  picture  is  a  masterpiece  not  only 
of  emotional  painting  but  of  silvery  and  ex- 
quisite colour. 

In  the  early  days  of  September  Termonde, 
an  open  town,  was  bombarded  and  captured  by 
the  Germans,  despite  the  fact  that,  as  in  the 
days  of  Louis  XIV.,  the  surrounding  country 
had  been  flooded.  A  good  many  buildings  were 
destroyed  by  shells  ;  the  suburb  of  St.  Gilles 
was  wiped  out,  and  on  the  entry  of  the  invading 
troops  the  town  was  sacked  and  the  bridges 
blown  up.  Villages  around  Termonde  suffered 
a  similar  fate  and  were  burned  to  the  ground. 
The  demand  for  a  fine  of  £40,000  proving  fruit- 
less, the  Germans  in  revenge  trained  heavy  guns 
on  the  houses,  and  burned  right  and  left.  By 
the  evening  of  Sunday,  September  6,  not  a 
house  stood  whole  ;  the  place  was  practically 
a  smouldering  ruin.  As  if  this  were  not  enough, 
the  Germans,  having  later  evacuated  the  posi- 
tion, returned  some  days  afterwards  and  again 
bombarded  the  town.  This  time  the  Town 
HaU  shared  the  common  fate.     The  famous  peal 


MALINES   CATHEDRAL. 
Window  destroyed  by  German  shell. 

[Underwood  Gr  Underwood. 


THE    CRUCIFIXION,   by  Van  Dyck, 
In  the  Church  of  Notre  Dame,  at  Termonde. 

Mansell  G*  Co.]  [Photo  by  Herman. 

of  bells  in  the  belfry  were  brought  down ;  the 
interior  was  gutted  and  its  paintings  and  other 
art  treasures  utterly  destroyed.  Field  guns 
were  trained  on  the  tower  of  Notre-Dame, 
and  the  chiirch  was  seriously  injured. 

A  fortnight  later  the  remains  of  this  once 
famous  and  beautiful  city  were  visited,  in 
company  with  a  Belgian  Staff  Officer  and  others, 
by  Mr.  J.  H.  Whitehouse,  M.P.,  who  has  thus 
recorded  what  he  saw  : — 

Termonde  a  few  weeks  ago  was  a  beautiful  city  of 
about  16,000  inhabitants  ;  a  city  in  which  the  dignity 
of  its  buildings  harmonized  with  the  natural  beauty 
of  its  situation  ;  a  city  which  contained  some  buildings 
of  surpassing  interest.  I  found  it  entirely  destroyed  ; 
I  went  through  street  after  street,  square  after  square, 
and  I  found  that  every  house  was  entirely  destroyed 
with  all  its  contents.  It  was  not  the  result  of  a 
bombardment.  It  was  systematic  destruction.  In 
each  house  a  separate  bomb  had  been  placed  which 
had  blown  up  the  interior  and  had  set  fire  to  the 
contents.  All  that  remained  in  every  case  were 
portions  of  the  outer  walls  still  constantly  falling,  and 
inside  the  cinders  of  the  contents.  Not  a  shred  of 
furniture  or  of  anything  else  remained. 

This  sight  continued  in  street  after  street  through- 
out the  entire  extent  of  what  had  been  a  considerable 
town.  It  had  an  indescribable  influence  upon  the 
observer  which  no  printed  description  or  even  pictorial 
record  could  give.  This  influence  was  increased  by 
the  utter  silence  of  the  city,  broken  only  by  the  sound 
of  the  guns.  Of  the  population  I  thought  not  a  soul 
remained — I  was  wrong.  For  as  we  turned  into  a 
square  where  the  wreck  of  what  had  been  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  of  Gothic  churches  met  my  eyes, 
a  blind  woman  and  her  daughter  groped  among  the 


322 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


M  ALINES. 
The  Old  Brussels  Gate. 

[Undtrwood  &  Underwood. 

ruins.  They  were  the  sole  Uving  creatures  in  the 
whole  of  the  town.  Shops,  factories,  churches,  the 
houses  of  the  wealthy,  all  were  similarly  destroyed. 
One  qualification  only  have  I  to  make  of  this  state- 
ment. Two,  or  perhaps  three,  houses  bore  a  German 
command  in  chalk  that  they  were  not  to  be  burnt. 
These  remained  standing,  but  deserted,  amidst  the 
ruins  on  either  side.  Where  a  destroyed  house  had 
obviously  contained  articles  of  value  looting  had 
taken  place.  In  the  ruins  of  what  had  been  a  jeweller's 
shop  the  remains  of  the  safe  were  visible  amidst  the 
cinders.  The  part  around  the  lock  had  been  blown 
off  and  the  contents  obviously  rifled.  I  inquired 
what  had  become  of  the  population.  It  was  a  ques- 
tion to  which  no  direct  reply  could  be  given.  They 
had  fled  in  all  directions.  Some  had  reached  Antwerp, 
but  a  great  number  were  wandering  about  the  country 
panic-stricken  and  starving;  many  were  already  dead. 

I  had  other  opportunities  of  seeing  that  what  had 
happened  at  Termonde  was  similar  to  what  had 
happened  in  other  parts  of  Belgium  under  the  mili- 
tary occupation  of  Germany,  and  I  have  given  this 
record  of  the  condition  of  Termonde  because  it  is 
typical  of  so  many  other  parts  of  Belgium.  The 
result  is  that  conditions  have  been  set  up  for  the 
civilian  population  throughout  the  occupied  terri- 
tory of  unexampled  misery.  Comparatively  only 
a  few  refugees  have  reached  this  country.  The  others 
remain  wandering  about  Belgium,  flocking  into  other 
towns  and  villages  or  flying  to  points  a  little  way 
across  the  Dutch  frontier. 

The  whole  life  of  the  nation  has  been  arrested  ; 
the  food  supplies  which  would  ordinarily  reach  the 
civihan  population  are  being  taken  by  the  German 
troops  for  their  own  support ;  the  peasants  and  poor 


are  without  the  necessaries  of  life,  and  the  conditions 
of  starvation  grow  more  acute  every  day.  Even 
where,  as  in  some  cases  happens,  there  is  a  supply  of 
wheat  available,  the  peasants  are  not  allowed  to  use 
their  windmills  owing  to  the  German  fear  that  they 
will  send  signals  to  the  Belgian  Army.  We  are 
therefore  face  to  face  with  a  fact  which  has  rarely, 
if  ever,  occurred  in  the  history  of  the  world — an 
entire  nation  in  a  state  of  famine,  and  that  within 
half  a  day's  journey  of  our  own  shores. 

The  completeness  of  the  destruction  in  each  in- 
dividual case  was  explained  to  me  later  by  the  Bel- 
gian Ministers,  who  described  to  me  the  numerous 
apphances  which  the  German  soldiers  carried  for 
destroying  property.  Not  only  were  hand-bombs 
of  various  sizes  and  descriptions  carried,  but  each 
soldier  was  supplied  with  a  quantity  of  small  black 
discs  little  bigger  than  a  sixpenny  piece.  I  saw 
these  discs  which  had  been  taken  from  German 
soldiers  on  the  field  of  battle.  These  were  described 
to  me  as  _  being  composed  of  compressed  benzine  ; 
when  lighted  they  burn  brilliantly  for  a  few  minutes, 
and  are  sufficient  to  start  whatever  fire  is  necessary 
after  the  explosion  of  the  bomb. 

"  The  revengeful  act  of  disappointed  black- 
mailers "  is  a  fitting  description  of  such  a  deed 
as  this.  The  responsible  author  of  the  outrage 
was  Major  Sommerfeld. 

The  turn  of  Alost  was  to  come.  Alost, 
a  thriving  town  of  East  Flanders  and  a  railway 
junction  about  half-way  between  Ghent  and 
Brussels,  was  important  as  the  centre  of  the 
Belgian  trade  in  hops,  but  still  more  perhaps 
for  its  ancient  memories.  Alost,  or  Aalst,  weis 
once  a  capital — the  metropolitan  city  of  Keizer- 
Vlanderen,  the  realm  of  the  Counts  of  Flanders 
from  the  eleventh  centiiry  onwards.  Little 
remained  of  its  ancient  glories  except  the  evi- 
dence of  the  elaborate  and  handsome  Town  Hall 
with  a  very  high  and  crocketed  belfry  of  the 
fifteenth  centvtry.  The  Church  of  St.  Martin,  xm- 
finished,  could  give  but  a  poor  idea  of  the  great 
fane 'that  should  have  stood  upon  the  site; 
but  it  contained,  besides  some  fifteenth  century 
m\iral  paintings,  one  great  treasure — a  picture 
painted  by  Rubens  about  1625  for  the  Guild 
of  Alost  of  Brewers.  The  subject  is  Christ 
appointing  St.  Roch  the  guardian  of  the  plague, 
stricken,  and  the  painter  has  made  the  most  of 
the  dramatic  contrast  between  the  lepers  and 
other  sufferers  and  the  radiant  glory  of  the 
celestial    figures. 

The  ancient  ranaparts  of  Alost  had  mainly 
disappeared  —  partly  to  gratify  the  modem 
Belgian's  love  of  broad  and  airy  boulevards, 
but  partly  in  the  stress  of  centviries  of 
combat.  For  Alost  was  no  stranger  to  the 
horrors  of  war.  In  the  Wa^s  of  Rehgion  it 
suffered  terribly ;  again  and  again  in  later 
times  it  was  ravaged,  and  Turenne  left  an 
indelible  mark  upon  it.  Its  final  ruin  by  the 
German  forces  in  the  Great  War  seemed  to  be  sis 
wanton  and  needless  as  the  burning  of  Louvain. 
A  Belgian  force  advancing  westward  drove  out 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


323 


TERMONDE. 
The  Railway  Bridge. 


[Sport  and  Central. 


of  Alost  the  German  troops  who  had  entered 
the  undefended  and  peaceful  town.  No  moles- 
tation had  been  offered  them  while  they  were 
there ;  but  in  departing  thej'  set  fire  to  the 
town  in  several  pleices. 


The  tale  might  be  almost  indefinitely  pro- 
longed. On  September  28,  1914,  a  special  corre- 
spondent of  The  Times  wrote  an  account  of  the 
German  treatment  of  two  inoffensive  and  unde- 
fended towns,  Deynze  and  Thielt,  on  the  night  of 


BELGIAN    SOLDIER    STANDING    ON    THE    RUINS    OF    ABOVE    BRIDGE. 

Photographed  shortly  after  it  was  blown  up.  [Sport  and  Central. 


324 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


t  TERMONDE. 

Re-occupied  by  the  Belgian  soldiers  after  bombardment. 


[Record  Press. 


Saturday,  September  26.  Both  were  smaU 
places  a  few  miles  south-westward  of  Ghent. 
Thielt  retained  from  its  busy  and  prosperous  past 
an  old  Cloth  Hall  and  belfry ;  Deynze  had  an  old 
church.  "  Nothing  that  Germany  has  done  in 
this  war,"  wrote  The  Times  correspondent, 

has  been  more  contempHl.le  than  the  dropping  of 
bombs  on  Saturday  night  on  Deynze  and  Thielt,  and 
especially  on  Deynze.  At  Thielt  no  harm  whatever 
was  done.  The  bombs  fell  where  they  could  do,  and 
did,  no  damage.  At  Deynze  the  result  was  not  much 
different. 

Deynze  is  an  open  town  of  no  military  strength  or 
importance.  Besides  the  church  it  has  one  con- 
spicuous institution,  the  Hospital  and  Pensionnat  of 
the  Sisters  of  St.  Vincent  de  Paul.  It  is  the  mother 
institution  of  the  order  in  this  region,  with  soHie  25 
affiliated  hospitals  and  orphanages  in  other  towns.  It 
contains  90  sisters.  In  addition  there  are  the  serving 
sisters,  a  number  of  aged  and  infirm  sisters  who  are 
tended  here,  sick  folk  who  are  taken  in  and  nursed, 
a  number  of  girl  orphans,  and,  at  the  moment,  some 
20  poor  refugees  from  Malines.  In  all,  the  b\ulding 
shelters  some  200  people,  women  and  children,  either 
sick  or  aged  or  orphan  or  giving  their  lives  to 
charity.  Over  the  building  floats  a  lai^e  Red  Cross 
flag. 

On  this  building  the  airship  on  Saturday  night 
dropped  four  bombs.  That  the  injuries  to  persons 
were  limited  to  the  slight  wounding  in  the  leg  of  one 
old  man  of  over  80,  who  had  been  allowed  to  sleep  in  a 
kind  of  outhouse,  is  nothing  less  than  a  miracle.  The 
particular  bomb  which  hurt  the  old  man  landed  and 
exploded  at  the  outhouse  door,  shattering  it  and  the 
bed  in  which  he  slept  and  digging  a  hole  nearly  2ft. 
deep  in  the  groimd.  Another  fell  harmlessly,  digging 
another  deep  hole  in  a  small  paved  alley  or  endroit 
alongside.     Two  others  struck  the  building. 

Both  these  exploded  immediately  on  hitting  the 
roof — one  at  a  point  where  it  did  no  harm,  except  to 


the  roof  itself,  and  the  other  immediately  above  the 
party  wall  separating  the  sisters'  dormitory  from 
other  rooms.  The  wall,  the  passage  outside,  much  of 
the  floor,  and  a  large  part  of  the  ceiling  of  the  dor- 
mitory were  completely  wrecked.  The  sleeping 
women  were  covered  with  plaster  and  wreckage,  but 
not  one  was  even  scratched. 

I  went  over  the  building  yesterday  afternoon  with 
the  Sister  Superior  and  the  Directress,  and  stood  in  the 
half -wrecked  dormitory  open  to  the  sky.  The  sisters 
were  even  yet  carrying  their  bedding  down  to  the 
ground  floor  in  fear  of  a  second  attack,  a  work  in  which 
we  lent  a  hand.  It  seems  to  me  that  even  more 
damning  than  any  of  the  great  atrocities  which  the 
Germans  have  committed  is  the  picture  of  that  build- 
ing, the  abode  of  charity  and  gentleness,  with  all  its 
helpless  inmates,  and  the  midnight  bombs  exploding 
in  the  very  sleeping  chamber  of  the  Sisters  of  Mercy. 
The  sight  of  the  house  and  its  inmates  to-day  enraged 
me  as  I  have  been  enraged  by  nothing  even  in  Ter- 
monde,  Malines,  and  elsewhere. 

The  fate  of  Antwerp  is  the  subject  of  a 
separate  chapter ;  but  as  early  as  the  night 
of  August  24-25  it  had  received  a  menacing 
hint  of  the  coming  "  Kultur,"  when  a  German 
airship  passed  over  the  city  and  dropped 
a  number  of  bombs.  According  to  the  cal- 
ciilation  of  an  eye-witness,  nearlj'  a  thous- 
and houses  were  slightly  damaged  and  over 
50  houses  nearly  destroyed.  One  bomb 
fell  very  near  the  Royal  Palace ;  and  the 
majority  were  aimed  at  public  buildings.  The 
nmnber  of  victims  was  considerable.  Yet  there 
was  a  touch  of  humour  in  the  affair.  It  was 
said  that  a  bomb  fell  upon  the  Germjui  Club  and 
destroyed  a  statue 'of  the  Emperor  William. 
On  subsequent  occasions  Antwerp  was  again 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


325 


visited  by  airships,  and  among  the  buildings 
struck  was  a  large  hospital,  clearly  marked  by 
the  Red  Cross.  The  Belgian  authorities  took 
the  precaution  of  removing  the  most  valuable 
objects  in  the  great  Cathedral  of  Antwerp  into 
a  place  of  safe  custody  ;  and  among  the  pictures 
so  safeguarded  was  Rubens'  great  masterpiece, 
"  The  Descent  from  the  Cross." 

The  facts  already  given  by  no  means  exhaust 
the  list  of  towns  and  villages  pillaged,  shelled,  or 
destroyed  by  the  German  troops  in  their  advance 
towards  France  through  Belgium.  At  Lierre, 
for  instance,  the  religious  hovises  of  the  Black 
Sisters  and  the  Jesuits  were  shattered  to  pieces  ; 
the  Town  Hall  of  Willebroeck  was  blown  to 
bits  by  shells  ;  the  village  of  Andegem  was 
almost  totally  wrecked,  and  the  church  re- 
duced to  little  better  than  a  ruin.  A  beavy 
fate  befell  Saventhem,  a  place  of  peculiar  in- 
terest owing  to  its  association  with  Van  Dyck. 
Not  only  did  it  possess  a  famous  picture  of 
"  St.  Martin  dividing  his  cloak  with  a  beggar," 
painted  by  that  master  as  one  of  a  series  dixring 
his  early  days  in  Italy,  and  commissioned  for 
Saventhem  by  the  Seigneiir  of  the  place,  Ferdi- 
nand de  Boisschot,  Comte  d'Erps,  but  it  was 
Saventhem  that  saw  the  famous  romance 
between    the    painter    and    the    "  fair    maid," 


Isabella  van  Ophem,  which  occupied  some 
months  of  his  life  in  or  about  1630.  To  all 
true  lovers  of  art  Saventhem  should  have  been 
a  place  to  protect  and  cherish  for  the  sake  of  its 
association  with  a  great  artist.  But  the  more 
the  subject  was  examined  the  more  complete 
and  awful  became  the  evidence  of  the  trail  of 
devastation  which  the  German  forces  left 
behind  them  in  the  spread  of  cultiire.  War, 
of  course  (and  especially  war  by  means  of  the 
terrible  explosives  which  modem  science  has 
invented  for  the  destruction  of  man  and  all  his 
works),  cannot  be  carried  on  without  havoc.  In 
some  cases  the  Germans  could  justly  plead  mili- 
tary necessities.  In  many  others  history  is  unable 
to  acquit  them  of  wanton  damage,  inspired  merely 
by  revenge  or  by  a  lust  of  brutal  destruction. 

The  loss  of  crops,  stock,  and  farming  plant 
throughout  the  countryside  was  incalculable. 
Before  the  war  Belgivmi  was  a  densely  popu- 
lated coimtry  ;  most  of  the  land  was  occupied 
in  small  holdings,  into  which  the  peasant 
proprietor  and  every  member  of  his  family 
put  the  incessant  labour  which  was  character- 
istic of  the  people,  especially  in  the  portion 
of  the  country  inhabited  by  the  Flemings, 
and  which  had  made  Belgium  what  she  was. 
It  was  no  uncommon   sight  to  see  the  smallest 


TERMONDE. 
Scene  of  Destruction. 


[RecprJ  Press. 


326 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


HOTEL    DE    VILLE,    LIERRE. 
Former  Belgian  Headquarters ;  Garde  Civique  in  the  foregroxind. 


children  taking  their  simple  and  easy  share 
in  the  cultivation  of  the  family  fields  and 
gardens ;  and  it  was  this  universal  and  un- 
remitting labour  that  brought  prosperity  to  the 
countryside.  Such  small  occupations  leave 
their  holders  a  much  narrower  margin  between 
comfort  and  destitution  than  do  large  estates, 
the  owner  of  which  can  frequently  afford  to 
finance  his  tenants  in  case  of  necessity  ;  and 
the  destruction — ^not  all  of  it,  no  doubt,  wanton 
— which  was  wreaked  upon  these  small  holdings 
by  the  invader  entailed  a  much  greater  amount 
of  loss  and  suffering  than  would  have  been  the 


case  with  large  holdings,  both  by  reason  of  the 
greater  proportion  of  people  to  the  £trea,  and 
because  small  occupiers  necessarily  put  every- 
thing they  have  into  their  farms  and  can 
maintain  little  reserves  of  money.  Of  the 
refugees  who  came  in  their  thousands  to  England 
a  great  number  were  absolutely  destitute. 
Their  homesteads  had  been  knocked  to  pieces  and 
bixmed ;  their  horses  and  dogs  carried  off,  their 
crops  utterly  ruined,  and  their  very  land  so  left 
that  only  years  of  cultivation  could  restore  it 
to  the  state  into  which  minute  and  laborious 
toil  had  brought  it. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

THE  GERMAN   ADVANCE  ON  PARIS: 
BATTLES    OF    NAMUR,    CHARLEROI, 

MONS. 


The  German  Objective — An  Invasion  Tibough  Belgium  Inevitable — Strength  of  the 
French  Eastern  Frontier  and  Weakness  of  French  Northern  Frontier^ — Expenditure  on 
Fortresses — Systems  of  Fortification — The  German  and  French  Plans — A  Rapid  Offensive 
Imperative  for  the  Germans — The  British  Expeditionary  Force  and  its  Place  in  General 
Joffre's  Scheme — Composition  of  the  Expeditionary  Force — Sir  John  French  and  his 
Record — ^Mobilization,  Composition,  and  Transport  of  the  British  Army  to  France — The 
Theatre  of  War  and  Position  of  the  British  in  it — The  Kaiser  and  the  "Contemptible" 
British  Army — March  of  the  Germans  on  the  Sambre — Capture  of  Namur — ^Forcing  of  the 
Sambre  at  and  near  Charleroi — Battle  of  Mons. 


WE  have  seen  from  a  foregoing  chap- 
ter that  the  German  plans  were  com- 
pletely upset  by  the  gallant  resistance 
offered  by  the  fortress  of  Liege  and 
the  determined  opposition  of  the  Belgian  Army. 
It  is  true  that  rarely  can  any  operations  of  war 
be  carried  on  continuously  in  accordance  with  a 
previously  prepared  scheme,  for,  as  Moltke 
pointed  out,  the  measures  taken  for  any  stra- 
tegical movement  only  hold  good  up  to  the  first 
collision  between  the  opposing  forces,  the  result 
of  which  may  strongly  influence  or  even  com- 
pletely change  the  direction  of  the  line  of 
action.  It  is  more  correct,  therefore,  to  say 
that  war  is  conducted  in  accordance  with  some 
"  General  Idea,"  which  bears  in  mind  certain 
specific  objects. 

The  first  and  most  important  of  these  is  the 
destruction  of  the  enemy's  field  armies,  for  once 
these  are  crushed  his  power  of  resistance  is  at  an 
end,  and  he  must  perforce  yield  to  the  wishes  of 
the  victor. 

Still,  history  shows  that  while  this  is  the  main 
objective,  there  are  others,  the  attainment  of 
which  will  often  influence  the  result  of  a  war. 
The  capture  of  important  sources  of  supply, 


whether  of  food  or  munitions  of  war,  will  have 
some  effect,  and  in  highly  centralized  States  the 
occupation  of  the  enemy's  capital  has  always 
produced  a  profound  impression. 

Remembering  the  results  previously  obtained 
by  the  fall  of  Paris,  the  Germans  believed  that 
its  reduction  would  produce  a  hke  effect  in  the 
present  struggle.  Hence  the  leading  idea  in  the 
German  plan  was  a  quick  rush  through  Belgium, 
to  be  followed  by  a  rapid  advance  on  Paris. 
It  might  be  bombarded  from  all  sides  or 
at  any  rate  a  sufficient  number  of  its  forts 
were  to  be  reduced  by  this  means,  and  then  it 
was  believed  the  city  itself  would  soon  surrender 
under  the  threat  of  destruction. 

With  the  large  forces  which  the  Germans  put 
in  the  field  at  the  outset  of  the  war  it  was  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  have  a  long  line  of  strategical 
deployment,  i.e.,  the  Une  of  country  along  which 
the  forces  were  to  be  developed  as  a  preliminary 
to  their  advance  into  France.  To  move  through 
the  Vosges  was  impossible  on  any  large  scale 
owing  to  the  paucity  of  roads.  Moreover, 
the  heads  of  the  German  columns  debouching 
through  the  passes  would  have  been  brought  up 
by  the  long  line  of  barrier  forts  from  ^^pinal 


327 


328 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


ROYAL    MARINE    LIGHT    INFANTRY    ARRIVE    ON    THE    CONTINENT. 

This  was  the  first  time  they  had  worn  khaki.  [Record  Press- 


to  Belfort.  The  Gap  of  Belfort,  through 
which  the  Axistrian  Army  under  Schwartzenberg 
came  in  1814,  was  stopped  by  the  important  for- 
tress erected  at  that  point.  There  remained  only 
two  zones  of  invasion,  viz.,  that  between  Nancy 
and  Thionville,  and  that  from  Maubeuge  to  Dun- 
kirk, the  latter  being  approachable  only  through 
Belgium.  For  between  Thionville  and  Maubeuge 
lay  the  difficult  country  of  the  Ardennes,  covered 
with  woods,  with  few  railroads  leading  towards 
France,  and  with  roads  unsuited  for  the  move- 
ment of  large  bodies  of  men  with  their  heavy 
military  wheel  carriage.  This  region,  therefore, 
could  only  be  used  for  a  comparatively  small 
portion  of  the  invading  army. 

The  advance  through  Belgium  then  had 
many  advantages ;  it  was  hoped  that  the 
Government  of  the  country  would  yield  to 
force  majeure  and  oppose  no  hindrance  to  it. 
It  was  believed  the  Belgian  Army  was  of  but 
little  value  and  could  be  swept  out  of  the  way. 
Thus  the  Germans  would  reach  a  point  on  the 
French  frontier  only  about  120  miles  from  Paris, 
and  their  further  advance  would  turn  the  line 
of  defences  on  the  French  eastern  frontier.  It 
was  known  that  those  of  the  Northern  frontier 
were  not  capable  of  resisting  an  attack  with 
modem  weapons,  and  would,  therefore,  not 
oppose  a  vigorous  resistance  to  the  onward 
march  of  the  Germans. 

France,  after  the  war  of  1870,  had  entered 
on  a  period  on  which  it  was  admitted  she  must 
at  first  assume  a  defensive  attitude  towards  a 


German  invasion,  and  she  had  constr,ucted  a 
vast  series  of  fortifications  at  a  cost  of  over 
£95,000,000  to  protect  her  frontiers.  Two 
main  lines  of  invasion  had  to  be  dealt  with, 
which  may  roughly  be  described  as  being  the 
one  through  Belgium  against  the  line  Lille- 
Maubeuge,  the  other  from  the  Bavarian  Pala- 
tinate between  Treves  and  Nancy.  The  Com- 
mittee of  Defence,  presided  over  by  General  de 
Riviere,  proposed  to  meet  both  dangers  by 
lines  of  works  directly  barring  them. 

The  eastern  frontier  was  naturally  considered 
the  more  important,  as  the  danger  of  irrup- 
tion in  that  direction  was  more  imminent 
since  the  northern  frontier  was  to  some  extent 
rendered  secure  by  the  neutrality  of  Belgium, 
guaranteed  jointly  by  France,  Prussia,  and  Eng- 
land ;  accordingly  it  received  the  first  and 
greatest  attention.  The  fortifications  of  Paris 
also  were  so  improved  that  by  1878  it  was  con- 
sidered that  the  enormous  perimeter  a  blockad- 
ing army  would  have  to  occupy — not  less  than 
120  miles — would  involve  such  a  subtraction 
from  the  German  field  armies  as  to  reduce  the 
latter  to  a  very  restricted  offensive  and  neutralize 
the  advantage  that  the  numerically  greater 
population  of  Germany,  and  consequently 
larger  army,  gave  to  that  cotintry. 

But  the  heavy  cost  of  construction  prevented 
the  carrying  out  of  the  plan  of  work  for  the 
northern  frontier  in  its  entirety.  The  first  pro- 
ject had  comprised  a  very  complete  defensive 
organization.       An  army  was  to  be  assembled 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


329 


in  a  central  position  between  the  Scarpe  and 
the  Sambre,  ready  to  resist  a  frontal  attack 
from  Belgium  or  to  act  on  the  flanks  of  a  force 
penetrating  from  that  covmtry  into  France.  It 
was  to  be  supported  on  its  left  by  Douai  and  a 
number  of  forts  which  were  to  protect  the  inun- 
dations to  be  created  on  the  Scarpe.  The 
Scheldt  was  also  to  furnish  similar  obstacles, 
which  were  to  be  covered  by  an  important  for- 
tress at  Valenciennes.  The  right  end  was  to  be 
defended  by  Maubeuge,  to  be  made  into  an 
entrenched  camp,*  while  minor  works  were  to 
support  the  latter  and  also  the  centre  at  Ques- 
noy  and  other  places.  Between  the  Scarpe  and 
the  Lys,  Lille  was  also  to  be  made  a  great  en- 
trenched camp,  and  further  to  be  protected  by 
inundations,  while  on  the  coast  Diinkirk  was  to 
be  raised  to  the  status  of  an  important  fortress, 
and  Gravelines  and  Calais  were  also  to  be 
defended. 

Further  to  the  south-east  of  Maubeuge, 
Mezieres  on  the  Meuse  was  to  be  converted  into 
a  powerful  fortress,  and  forts  were  to  be  erected 
at  Rocroy  and  Hirson  ;  Montm6dy  and  Longwy 
were  to  be  strengthened. 

The  discovery  of  high  explosives  which  could 
be   employed   instead  of   ordinary   gunpowder 


*An  entrenched  camp  is  a  region  enclosed  by  a  ring  of  forts.  If 
constructed  round  a  town,  tlie  latter  is  often  protected  by  a  continu- 
ous line  of  fortifications  known  as  an  "  enceinte."  Tills  secures  the 
town  from  being  rushed  should  a  section  of  the  forts  be  overpowered. 
The  absence  of  an  enceinte  allowed  the  Germans  to  rush  the  town  of 
Li6ge  before  the  forts  had  yielded. 


for  the  charges  of  shells — thereby  enormously 
increasing  their  disruptive  effect — ^brought  about 
a  complete  change  in  the  military  engineering 
world.  The  French  designers  of  the  seventies 
had  built  their  fortifications  to  resist  the  old 
weapons  ;  against  them  could  be  brought  the 
new.  Not  only  were  these  superior  in  the 
efficacy  of  their  projectiles,  but  it  became  plain 
that  heavier  guns  would,  with  the  great  improve- 
ments made  in  the  construction  of  carriages, 
be  brought  into  the  field.  For  instance,  in  the 
middle  eighties  the  Germans  kept  in  constant 
readiness  at  Mainz  a  so-called  light  siege  train 
of  sixty  15m.  howitzers  intended  for  use  against 
barrier -forts  on  the  eastern  French  frontier.* 
The  enormous  sum  of  money  already  expended 
on  the  provision  of  fortifications,  which,  as  we 
have  seen, ,,  amounted  to  nearly  a  hundred 
milhon  pounds  sterling,  precluded  the  complete 
remodelling  of  the  whole  system,  but  con- 
siderable sums  were  devoted  to  improving  that 
portion  which  faced  Lorraine,  and  this  was 
largely  provided  from  savings  due  to  the  non- 
completion  of  works  on  the  Belgian  frontier. 
Those  projected  at  Dunkirk,  Valenciennes, 
and  Mezieres  were  postponed,  but  Fort  des 
AyoUes  at  the  latter  place  was  constructed. 
A  like  fate  befell  St.  Omer,  Douai, 
P^ronne  and  other  works  Which  it  had  been 


•  Eauivalent  to  an  English  61n.  weapon,  firing  a  shell  of  about 
901b.  weight. 


A  SECTION   OF  THE  ROYAL   FLYING  CORPS  AT  THE  FRONT. 

{Neuspapff  Illustrations. 


330 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


BRITISH    TROOPS    AT    THE    FRONT. 
Photograph  taken  in  a  French  town. 

[London  News  Agency. 

originally  intended  to  erect  on  this  frontier. 
Nor  was  Lille  finished  in  accordance  with  the 
original  plan,  and  was,  therefore,  in  the  Great 
War,  not  idefended.  Moreover,  the  second 
line  which  it  had  been  determined  to  build 
from  La  Fere-Laon-Rheims  was  never  pro- 
perly completed,  and  thus  offered  little  or 
no  resistance  to  the  onward  march  of  the 
Germans. 

There  had,  indeed,  long  been  grojving  up  a 
school  of  engineers  which  held  that  the  future 
of  fortification  lay  in  the  use  of  concrete,  a 
more  homogeneous  material,  and  therefore  not 
so  easily  destroyed  as  brick  or  stone  work,  and 
which  believed  that  the  only   protection  for 


gims  was  to  be  found  in  armoured  positions 
made  of  concrete  (later  on  ferro-concrete),  -with 
the  gims  placed  in  steel  defended  cupolas. 
Spasmodic  efforts  had  been  made  in  this  direc- 
tion a  few  years  after  the  termination  of  the 
Franco -German  War.  One  of  the  old  Antwerp 
forts  had  been  given  an  armoured  turret.  The 
Germans  at  first  proposed  to  use  large  masses 
of  chilled  iron  to  cover  gun  positions  for  defence 
against  attack  from  the  sea.  Rumania  built 
a  ring  of  forts  armed  with  6-inch  guns  in 
tvurets  round  Bukarest.  Lastly,  that  great 
master  of  fortification,  the  Belgian  General 
Brialmont,  who  may  be  truly  called  the 
modern  Vauban,  adopted  the  system  of  con 
Crete  and  iron  which  he  applied  to  the  fortresses 
of  Namur  and  Liege  and  the  intervening  fort  of 
Huy,  all  on  the  Meuse,  fortresses  intended  to 
bar  the  entry  of  the  Germans  into  Belgium  to 
Liege  and  to  the  ramifications  of  railways  from 
that  town  to  Brussels,  to  Namur  and  through 
the  Ardennes,  and  to  prevent  them  using  the 
main  railway  from  Aix-la-Chapelle  beyond  the 
frontier.  Recent  events  seem  to  show  his  views 
were  scarcely  correct ;  he  certainly  did  not  fore- 
see the  enormous  development  in  power  of 
artillery,  and,  moreover,  he  armed  his  forts  with 
too  light  guns,  viz.,  6in.  and  4.7in.  howitzers 
firing  shells  weighing  about  901b.  and  401b. 
respectively,  which  could  not  successfully  cope 
with  the  far  heavier  weapons  brought  against 
them.  It  cannot  be  said  that  the  resistance 
offered  by  Namur  was  adequate  to  the  amount 
spent  on  its  defences.  In  the  case  of  I^iege, 
however,  the  stand  it  made  was  of  the  highest 
value  to  the  Allies. 

The  deduction  is  obvious ;  if  the  concrete 
and  turret  system  is  to  be  employed,  the  very- 
largest  guns  must  be  vised  and  the  most  powerful 
cupolas.  Will  the  result  be  adequate  to  the 
price  paid  ?  It  seems  very  doubtful,  and  more 
than  ever  the  old  adage  seems  to  hold  good — 
"  Place  assiegee,  place  prise." 

It  was  this  consideration  which  gave  rise 
to  another  school  of  engineers  which  held  that 
all  elaborate  fortification  was  a  mistake  ;  that 
forts  should  be  built  of  earth  for  infantry 
defence  only,  and  that  gims  should  be  placed 
in  positions  carefully  thought  out,  but  not 
constructed  till  attack  was  imminent.  They 
pinned  their  faith  on  mobiUty  and  regarded  a 
railway  round  the  position  to  be  defended  aa 
the  most  important  item  in  a  scheme  of 
defence  which  would  allow  weapons  and 
munitions  to  be  transferred  from  one  point  to 
another  ss  the  requirements  of  the  case  de- 
manded.    Such  a  railway  would,  of  course,  b» 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


331 


covered  from  the  enemy's  fire  by  a  parapet  of 
gentle  slope,  as  shown  below.  Here  b,  b,  b,  are 
the  earthen  forts,  c,  c,  c,  the  railway. 


Section  through    d.  e. 


Sebastopol  and  Plevna  were  good  examples 
of  the  possibilities  of  such  a  sj'stem.  The  lines 
of  Torres-Vedras  in  1811,  constructed  by 
Wellington  for  the  defence  of  Lisbon,  were 
beyond  the  power  of  Massena's  army  to  attack. 
The  forts  constructed  at  the  end  of  the 
19th  century  for  the  defence  of  London 
were  based  on  these  ideas.  On  the  advent 
of  a  Radifcal  Government  to  power  the 
whole  project,  however,  was  abandoned. 


To  understand  the  fighting  which  marked 
the  opening  of  the  war  it  is  necessary  to  realize 
the  General  Ideas  of  both  the  German  and 
French  commanders.  Both  were  simple  in 
their  conception.  The  former  proposed  to 
overrun  Belgium  and  to  move  rapidly  across 
the  French  frontier  down  to  Paris  and,  after 
the  destruction  of  the  British  Fleet,  to  invade 
England  and  dictate  peace  in  London  on  such 
terms  as  Germany  might  determine.  The 
French  plan  offered  a  more  modest  programme. 
At  first  it  was  to  be  defensive.  An  army  was 
to  watch  the  debouch  of  the  Germans  from 
Belgium,  another  was  to  watch  the  Eastern 
frontier  of  France  from  a  position  behind 
Verdun.  Probably  a  force  was  to  be  assembled 
within  the  pentagon  formed  by  the  entrenched 
camp  of  ;^pinal,  Langres,  Besanyon,  Dijon,  and 
Belfort,  while  behind  there  was  to  be  a  reserve 
ready  to  be  thrown  towards  whichever  flank 
required  it.  None  of  these  arrangements  was 
carried  out  in  its  entirety. 

With  a  reprehensible  neglect  of  the  wishes  of. 
the  great  War  Lord,  the  Belgians  determined 
to  play  the  part  of  honourable  men  and  defend 
their  country.  The  Belgian  Army  barred  the 
way  and  Liege  was  prepared  to  defend  itself 
to  the  bitter  end.  So  certain  had  the  Germans 
been  of  the  easiness  of  the  task  of  disposing 
of  the  Belgian  forces  that  the  troops  which 
first    invaded    Belgium    appear    to  have    been 


A    BELGIAN    CART   DRAWN    BY   DOGS.  [Sport  and  CeneraU 

Has  been  used  in  France  for  transporting  machine-guns  and  ammunition. 


332 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GERMAN    PRISONERS    CAPTURED    BY    THE 
British  troops  are  lining  the  route. 


BRITISH. 


[London  News  -Agency. 


imperfectly  mobilized   and  to   have  possessed 
very  little  siege  artillery  to  deal  with  the  forts. 
The   resvilt   is   well   known.     Liege   held    out  ; 
the  Germans  uselessly  expended  thousands  of 
men,  and  the  time-table  of  campaign  so  care- 
fully drawn  up  by  the  German  demi-gods  of  the 
Imperial  General  StaflE  had  to  be  radically  re- 
vised.    The  possession  of  Liege  and  its  sister- 
fortress  of  Namur  was  vital  to  the  Germans, 
because  without  them  the  main  railway    line 
through  Belgitim  to  the  French  frontier  was  not 
available  nor  could  the  other  lines  from  Li6ge 
be  used.     But  the  gallantry  displayed  in  the 
old   archbishopric   town   did   something   more. 
It  was  difficult  for  a  nation  like  the  French,  so 
brave  in  itself  and  such  an  admirer  of  braverj^ 
in  others,  to  avoid  the  principle  of  raoving  to  the 
sound  of  the  cannon.     Part  of  the  French  north- 
em  army,  therefore,  was  moved  up  to  aid  their 
allies.     When  Namur  fell  and  the  enemy  was 
enabled  to  bring  up  more  troops  and  supplies, 
the  advanced  force  found  itself  exposed  to  direct 
attack  by  far  superior  numbers,  and,  what  was 
more  dangerous,  to  flank  attack  on  its  right  by 
Germans  coming  through  the  Ardennes.     In  the 
meantime  Sir  John  French  had  brought  up  two 
divisions  and  the  cavalry  division  of  the  English 
Army,    in    accordance    with   the    arrangement 
come  to   with  General   Joffre,   to   occupy   the 
ground  on  the  left  of  the  French,  and  this,  as  we 
shall  see,  helped  to  stem  the  German  advance. 

Before  going  into  considerations  of  the  fighting 
which  thus  arose,  let  iis  consider  briefly  the 


strategical  events  up  to  the  time  of  the  junction 
of  the  British  with  the  French. 

In  the  German  plan  time  was  the  essence  of 
the  bargain.  To  rush  down  to  Paris  and  captiu-e 
it  was  to  form  the  first  act  of  the  drama.  As 
the  main  advance  of  the  Emperor's  troops  was 
to  be  made  through  Belgium,  a  considerable  part 
of  his  army  moved  in  this  direction,  and  of  the 
whole  German  Army  by  far  the  greater  part  was 
used  against  the  French,  whom  it  was  desired  to 
crush  before  dealing  with  the  Russians,  who 
would,  it  was  calculated,  be  scarcely  concen- 
trated on  the  joint  frontier  before  the  French 
were  put  out  of  action.  This  plan,  however, 
had  in  it  the  fatal  error  that  no  one  of  the  German 
adversaries  did  what  the  Ge-man  General  Staff 
had  laid  dowTi  £is  its  duty  to  do.  On  the  Allies' 
left  Belgium  resisted,  the  Russians  mobilized  far 
more  rapidly  than  was  anticipated,  while  all 
along  the  line  of  invasion  the  French  put  up 
so  good  a  fight  that  the  cooperation  of  the 
German  centre  and  left  wing  coming  through 
Ltixemburg  and  Lorraine  was  limited  to  obtain- 
ing contact  with  their  right  wing. 

Of  the  25  Army  Corps  of  their  first-line 
troops  four  only  seem  to  have  been  employed 
against  Russia  and  21  against  France.*  Of 
these  about  iowc  were  used  at  first  for  the  opera- 
tions against  Liege,  and,  in  the  advance  against 

•  The  French  had  21  Anny  Corps,  i.e.,  the  same  number  as  the 
Germans,  and  of  about  equal  strength.  The  Germans  put 
Into  the  field  21  Keserve  Corps,  besides  a  number  of  Land- 
wehr  and  even  Candstunn  divisions,  but  all  of  these  were  probably 
not  available  at  first.  The  number  of  Beserve  Divisions  of  the 
Frencii  ia  uncertaiu. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


333 


the  retiring  Allies,  appear  to  have  been  partly 
on  the  left  of  the  German  First  Army,  which 
formed  the  right  of  the  force  following  up  the 
left  of  the  Allies  in  their  retreat  towards  Paris. 

Now,  it  was  essentia]  for  the  Germans  to  keep 
the  French  occupied  on  the  whole  line  of  their 
north  and  north-eastern  frontiers  and  along  the 
intervening  section  between  these  two  regions 
facing  the  Ardennes.  For  if  the  line  of  attack 
through  Belgium  was  clearly  indicated  from  the 
first,  it  would  be  possible  for  the  French,  with 
their  extensive  network  of  railways  stretching 
along  the  line  on  which  their  troops  were  de- 
ployed, to  move  their  troops  so  as  to  concentrate 
in  superior  force  against  them.  Roughly,  at  the 
outset,  so  far  as  the  regular  troops  were  con- 
cerned, the  numbers  must  have  been  fairly 
equal,  and  the  German  superiority,  which 
undoubtedly  existed,  must  have  been  due  to 
the  use  of  Reserve  Corps  from  the  beginning. 
But  this  superiority  never  had  any  great  effect 
on  the  struggle.  Why  ?  In  the  first  place,  the 
French  incursion  into  Alsace  from  Belfort  and 
over  the  Vosges  seems  to  have  diverted  a  con- 
siderable body  of  German  troops,  against  it.  In 
the  second,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Verdun 
and  the  forts  arovmd  it  were  able  to  resist  any 
attempts  made  against  them  because  the  Ger- 
mans were  not  able  to  spare  their  heaviest 
artillery  for  use  in  this  direction,  and  because 
the  fortifications  were  more  thoroughly  prepared 


than  those  facing  Belgium.  Hence  their 
infantry  advances  were  all  eventually  repelled. 
The  line  of  battle,  it  is  true,  fluctuated,  but, 
on  the  whole,  the  French  held  their  own  on  their 
right  flank  and  in  the  centre. 

When  the  Allied  left  was  driven  back  the 
distance  retreated  was  much  greater  than  was 
the  rearward  movement  on  their  right.  The 
explanation  of  this  is  simple.  Under  modem 
conditions  frontal  attack  is  exceedingly  difficult 
and  costly,  and  almost  impossible  against  a 
well-held  line.  Hence,  in  the  centre,  where 
flank  attack  on  any  large  scale  was  impossible, 
progress  was  necessarily  slow.  On  the  right 
(the  Verdim.-Belfort)  flank,  the  defensive  posi- 
tions held  by  the  French  were  too  strong  when 
directly  attacked,  while  to  outflank  them  was 
impossible  because,  great  as  were  the  numbers 
the  Germans  brought  into  the  field,  they  did 
not  suffice  to  devote  sufficient  force  to  encircling 
the  right  as  well  as  the  left  of  the  Allies.  The 
Germans  had  definitely  committed  themselves 
to  the  former  course  ;  they  had  perforce  to 
abandon  the  latter  for  fear  their  general  front, 
becoming  too  thin,  should  be  penetrated,  which 
would  have  given  rise  to  a  highly  dangerous 
position,  as  it  would  have  exposed  the  portion 
cut  oR  from  the  rest  (which  would  certainly 
have  been  the  right  wing)  to  complete  disaster. 

It  is  an  axiom  of  war  that  every  offensive 
must  in  time  come  to  an  end,  because  when 


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BRITISH   FIELD   GUN. 
Covered  with  wheat  to  conceal  its  presence  from  the  enemy. 


[Daily  Mirror. 


334 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


invading  an  enemy's  country  troops  have  to  be 
left  behind  to  guard  communications,  wliich  the 
defenders  do  not  need  to  do  as  the  country  is 
friendly  to  them.  This  was  clearly  shown  in 
Russia  in  1812,  when  out  of  the  600,000  with 
which  Napoleon  crossed  the  Nieraen  only  90,000 
were  available  for  the  battle  of  Borodino. 
When  Kluck  with  the  first  German  Army  fol- 
lowed up  the  British,  extending  his  line  more 
and  more  to  the  right,  there  came  a  time  when 
he  had  so  weakened  it  that  it  was  liable  to  pene- 
tration, combined  with  flank  attack,  by  the 
reinforcements  the  British  received,  and  by 
the  bringing  up  to  the  extreme  left  of  the  Paris 
army.  This  was  impossible  at  first  becatise 
very  large  forces  were  committed  to  the  offen- 
sive operations  in  Alsace.  But  as  soon  as  these 
came  to  an  end,  the  French  being  driven  back 
by  the  superior  forces  the  Germans  brought 
against  them,  the  attitude  on  the  eastern  frontier 
became  entirely  defensive,  and  Pau  was  sent 
oS  with  the  6th  Army  to  support  the  British 
left.  The  German  leaders  began  to  appreciate 
this  danger  when  they  saw  the  peril  which 
their  own  extension  of  the  right  wing  had  led 
them  into,  and  from  the  end  of  the  first  week 
in  September  they  saw  the  need  for  drawing  in 
their  horns.  Instead  of  the  Allies'  left  wing 
being  threatened  with  outflankrnent,  it  was 
the  German  right  wing  which  was  now  in  danger ; 
hence  the  pulling  it  in  and  Kluck's  flank  march 
of  concentration  to  join  the  German  centre. 
Then  the  Allies  assxmied  the  offensive. 

To  the  upsetting  of  the  German  "plans  by 
compelling  them  to  abandon  all  attempts  on 
Paris — the  second  act  of  the  Kaiser's  drama — 
the  British  largely  contributed. 


The  composition  of  our  Expeditionary  Army 
was  as  follows  : — * 

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF : 
FIELD-MARSHAL  SIR  JOHN  FRENCH. 

Chief  op  the  Staff. 
Lt.-Gen.  Sib  Archibald  Murray,  K.C.B. 
Maj.-Gen.  Sir  W.  Robertson,  K.C.V.O., 

Quartermaster-General. 

Maj.-Gen.  Sir  Nevil  Macready.    K.C.B., 

Adjutant-General. 

1st  ARMY  CORPS. 

Lt.-Gen.  Sir  Douglas  Haig,  K.C.B. ,  &c. 

(1st  and  2nd  Divisions.) 

1st  DIVISION— Maj.-Gen.  Lomax. 

1st  INFANTRY    BRIGADE— Brig.-Gen.    Maxse 
C.B. 

1st  Coldstream  Guards. 
1st  Scots  Guards. 
1st  Royal  Highlanders. 
2nd  Royal  Munster  Fusiliers. 

2nd  INFANTRY  BRIGADE— Brig.-Gen.  Bulfin, 
C.B. 

2nd  Royal  Sussex  Regiment. 
1st  North  Lancashire  Regiment. 
1st  Northamptonshire  Regiment. 
2nd  King's  Royal  Rifle  Corps. 

3rd  INFANTRY  BRIGADE— Brig.-Gen.  Landon, 
C.B. 

1st  Royal  West  Surrey  Regiment. 
1st  South  Wales  Borderers  . 
1st  Gloucester  Regiment. 
2nd  Welsh  Regiment. 

ROYAL  ARTILLERY— Brig.-Gen.  Findlay,  C.B, 
XXV.,    XXVI.,  and    XXXIX.    Brigades    Royal 

Field  Artillery,  18-pounders. 
XLIII.  Howitzer  Brigade. 
26th  Heavy  Battery,  60-pounders. 

ROYAL  ENGINEERS— Lt.-Col.  Schkeiber. 

23rd  and    26th  Field  Companies  and   1st  Signal 

Company. 

There  was  also  a  Cavalry  Regiment  with  the 
division. 

•  These  details  have  been  compiled  entirely  from  the  Army  List 
and  by  reference  to  the  Field  Service  Pocket  Book,  and  from  notices 
which  have  appeared  in  the  newspapers. 


MEAUX     FROM     THE     RIVER     MARNE. 
Showing    the    broken    bridge    and    sunken    house-boats. 


ISport  and  Central. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


385 


2nb  division. 

4th    INFANTRY     BRIGADE— 

2nd  Grenadier  Guards. 
2nd  Coldstream  Gu  rds. 
3rd  Coldstream  ,, 

1st  Irish  Guards 

5th   INFANTRY   BRIGADE— Brig.-Gen.   Haking, 
C.B. 

2nd  Worcester  Regiment. 
2nd  Oxford  and  Bucks  Regiment. 
2nd  Highland    Light   Infantry. 
2nd  Connaught  Rangers. 

6th     INFANTRY    BRIGADE— Brig.-Gen.     R.  H. 
Daviks,  C.B. 
1st  Liverpool  Regiment. 
2nd  South  Staffordshire  Regiment. 
1st  Berkshire   Regiment. 
1st  King's  Royal  R'fle  Corps. 

ROYAL  ARTILLERY— Brig. -Gen.Perceval,  D.S.O. 
XXXIV.,   XXXVI.,   and    XLI.  Brigade    Royal 

Field  Artillery,    18-pounders. 
XHV.  Brigade  Howitzers. 
35th  Heavy  Battery,  60-pounders. 

ROYAL  ENGINEERS— Lt.-Col.  Boys. 

5th    and    11th   Field   Companies,    1st   Bridging 

Train.     2nd    Signal    Company. 
There  was  also  a  Cavalry  Regiment. 

2nd  army    corps. 
General  Sir  H.  L.  Smith- Dorrien,  G.C.B.  &c. 
(3rd  and  5th  Divisions). 

3rd  DIVISION— Maj.-Gen.  H.  I.  W.  Hamilton,  C.B. 
7th  INFANTRY  BRIGADE— Brig.-Gen.  Mc- 
Cracken,  C.B. 

Srd  Worcester   Regiment. 

2nd  South  Lancashire  Regiment. 

1st  Wiltshire  Regiment. 

2nd  Royal  Irish  Rifles. 

8th  INFANTRY  BRIGADE— Brig.-Gen.  Doran.O.B. 
2nd  Royal  Scots. 
2nd  Royal  Irish  Regiment. 
4th  Middlesex  Regiment. 
1st  Gordon    Highlanders. 

9th  INFANTRY  BRIGADE— Brig.-Gen.  Shaw,  C.B. 
1st  Northumberland    Fusiliers. 
4th  Royal  Fusiliers. 
1st  Lincoln  Regiment. 
1st  Royal  Scots  Fusiliers. 

ROYAL    ARTILLERY— Brig.-Gen.  Wing,  C.B. 
XXIII.,  XL.,  and    XLII.    Brigade    Royal   Field 

Artillery,  18- pounders. 
XXX.  Brigade  Howitzers. 
48th  Battery,  60-pounders. 

ROYAL  ENGINEERS— Lt.-Col.  Wilson. 

56th   and    57th    Field   Companies.       3rd   Signal 
Company. 

There  was  also  a  Cavalry  Regiment  unidentifi- 
able from  the  Army  List. 

5th    DIVISION— Maj.-Gen.     Sir     C.     Ferguson, 

Bt.,  C.B. 
13th   INFANTRY     BRIGADE— Brig.-Gen.    Cuth- 
bert,  C.B. 
2nd  King's  Own  Scottish  Borderers. 
2nd  West    Riding    Regiment. 
1st  Royal  West  Kent   Regiment. 
2nd   Yorkshire   Light   Infantry. 

14th  INFANTRY  BRIGADE— Brig.-Gen.  Rolt,C.B. 

2nd  Suffolk  Regiment. 

1st  East   Surrey   Regiment. 

1st  Duke  of  Cornwall's   Light  Infantry. 

2nd  Manchester  Regiment, 


A    BRITISH    OUTPOST. 
On  the   look-out  for   the   enemy. 

[Daily  Mirror 

15th    INFANTRY   BRIGADE— Brio.-Gen.    Count 
Gleichen,  C.B.,  &c. 
1st  Norfolk  Regiment. 
1st  Bedford  Regiment. 
1st  Cheshire  Regiment. 
1st  Dorset  Regiment. 

ROYAL  ARTILLERY— Brig.-Gen.  Headlam,  C.B, 
XV.,     XVII.,     XVIII.     Brigades     Royal     Field 

Artillery,  18-pounders. 
VIII.  Howitzer  Brigade, 
108th  Heavy  Battery,  60-pounders. 

ROYAL  ENGINEERS— Lt.-Col.  Tulloch. 

7th    and     59th    Field    Companies.         5    Signal 
Companies. 

There  was  also  a  Cavalry  Regiment. 

The  4th  Division  apparently  formed  part  of 
the  Srd  Army  Corps,  the  other  Division  being 
the  6th.  Only  the  4th  Division  took  part  in 
these  operations 

It  was  composed  as  follows  : — 

4th   DIVISION— Maj.-Gen.   Snow,   C.B. 

10th  INFANTRY  BRIGADE— Brig.-Gen.  J.  A.  L. 
Haldane,  C.B. 
1st  Royal  Warwick  Regiment. 
2nd  Saaforth  Highlanders. 
1st  Royal  Irish  Fusiliers. 
2nd  Royal  Dublin  Fusiliers. 

11th  INFANTRY  BRIGADE— Brig.-Gbn.  Hunter- 
Weston,  C.B. 
1st  Somerset  Light  Infantry. 
1st  East  Lancashire  Regiment. 
1st  Hampshire  Regiment, 
1st  Rifle  Brifiiade. 


"> 


336 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


ENTRENCHING    A    60-POUNDER    GUN. 


[Daily  Mirror. 


12th  INFANTKY  BRIGADE— Brig.-Gen.  H.  F.  M. 
Wilson,  C.B. 
1st  Royal  Lancashire  Regiment. 
1st  Lancashire  FusiUers. 
2nd  Royal  Inniskilling  Pusiliere. 
2nd  Essex  Regiment. 

ROYAL   ARTILLERY— Brig.-Gen.  Milne,  C.B. 
XIV.,  XXIX.  and  XXXII.  Brigades  Royal  Field 

Artillery,  18-pounders. 
XXXVII.  Brigade  Howitzers. 
31st  Battery,  60  pounders. 

ROYAL   ENGINEERS. 

54th  Field  Company.     2nd  Bridging  Train. 
There  was  also  a  Cavalry  Regiment. 

The  Cavalry  with  the  Expeditionary  Force 

numbered  five  brigades,  according  to  the  Army 

List : — 

1st  CAVALRY  BRIGADE,  under  Brig.-Gen.  C.  J. 
Bbiggs,  C.B. 

2nd  Dragoon  Guards. 

5th  Dragoon  Guards. 

11th  Hussars. 
2nd   CAVALRY  BRIGADE,   under.  Briq.-Gen.  De 
Lisle,  C.B. 

4th  Dragoon  Guards. 

9th  Lancers. 

18th  Hussars. 
3rd    CAVALRY   BRIGADE,   under  Brig.-Gen.   H. 
GOUGH,   C.B. 

4th  Hussars. 

5th  Lancers. 

16th  Lancers. 
4th  CAVALRY   BRIGADE,   under   Bbig.-Gen.  the 
Hon.  C.  E.  Bingham,  C.B. 

Composite  Regiment  Household  Cavalry, 

6th  Dragoon  Guards. 

3rd  Hussars. 
5th   CAVALRY   BRIGADE,  under  Brig.-Gen.   Sib 
P.  W.  Chetwode,  Bt.,  D.S.O. 

2nd  Dragoons 

12th  Lancers. 

20th  Hussars. 

Of  these,  the  first  foiir  formed  the  Cavalry 
Division,  under  Maj.-Gen.  AUenby,  C.B.  Other 
troops  with  the  Divisiou  would  be  two  Horse 
Artillery  brigades,  or  24  guns,  2  machine  guns 
per  regiment,  or  24  in  all.  It  had,  in  addition, 
one  Field  Squadron  of  Engineers  and  one  Signal 
Squadron. 


The  average  strength  of  a  British  Division 
may  be  taken  as  12,000  infantry,  one  regiment 
of  cavalry,  and  76  guns,  viz.,  54  18- 
pounders,  18  howitzers  and  4  60-povmder 
guns  for  the  heavy  battery ;  two  Field  Com- 
panies of  Engineers,  besides  signallers  and  the 
train  services  for  ammunition  and  food  supply. 
Altogether  the  division  has  24  machine  guns 
distributed  among  the  twelve  battalions,  two 
to  each.  For  the  purposes  of  calculating  the 
fighting  strength  in  the  line  of  battle,  it  is  the 
infantry  and  artillery  alone  which  count. 

Sir  John  French,  the  generalissimo,  was  turn- 
ing sixty -two,  and,  therefore,  a  couple  of  years 
younger  than  Lord  Kitchener.  Like  Sir  Evel3Ti 
Wood  and  other  illustrious  officers,  he  had  been 
originally  destined  for  a  naval  career.  The  son 
of  a  naval  officer,  and,  though  bom  in  Kent,  of 
Irish  descent  on  his  father's  side,  he  had  joined 
the  Britannia  in  1866,  and  served  as  a  naval 
cadet  and  midshipman  for  four  years.  His 
experience  in  the  Navy  had  caused  him  to  hold 
strong  views  on  the  advantage  of  training 
soldiers  from  their  boyhood  for  the  arduous 
profession  of  arms.  "  I  have,"  he  had  pubUcly 
said  in  the  January  of  1914,  "  always  been  an 
ardent  advocate  of  the  principle  that  youths 
and  boys. who  are  destined  to  become  officers 
in  the  Army  should  commence  a  special  mihtary 
training  at  the  earliest  possible  age.  The 
principles  of  war  have  to  be  known  and  remem- 
bered, and  its  practice  conducted  under  very 
distracting  conditions.  The  science  of  war 
.  .  .  .  must,  so  to  speak,  form  part  of  our 
flesh  and  blood,  and  the  earUer  in  life  this  know- 
ledge is  instilled  and  acquired,  the  more  instruc- 
tive, valuable  and  lasting  it  is  likely  to  be."  He 
had  left  the  Navy,  and  through  the  Militia  had 
entered  the  8th  Hussars  in  1874.  Transferred 
immediately  to  the  19th  Hussars,  he  had,  after 
being  Adjutant  to  the  Auxiliary  Forces,  served 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


337. 


through  Lord  Wolseley's   Nile   Campaign,  and 
he  had  been  present  at  the  actions  of  Abu  Klea 
and  Metemmeh.     In  1889,  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
seven,  he  became  Colonel  of  his  regiment,  and 
was  the  first  to  establish  the  squadron  system 
of    training   which   was    subsequently   adopted 
throughout  the  Army.     He  had  attracted  the 
notice  of  Lord  Wolseley  and,  from  1893  to  1894, 
he  was  employed  on  the  Staff  as  Assistant  Adju- 
tant-General of  Cavalry,  and,  from  1895  to  1897, 
as  Assistant  Adjutant-General  at  Headquarters. 
In  the  latter  year  he  was  appointed  Brigadier 
to  command  the  2nd  Cavalry  Brigade,  and  in 
1899  he  was  transferred  as  temporary  Major- 
General  to  the  1st  Cavalry  Brigade  at  Aldershot. 
The  South  African  War  broke  out  and  he 
departed  for  Natal  in  command  of  the  cavalry. 
He  directed  the  troops  at  the  victory  of  Elands - 
laagte,    so   grapliically   described   by   the   late 
George    Steevens,  and  he  was   present   at   the 
actions    of    Reitfontein    and    Lombard's    Kop. 
He  left  Ladysmith  in  the  very  last  train  to  start 
before  that  town  was  completely  beleaguered. 
"  Had  it  not  been  for  this,"  he  is  reported  to 
have  said,  "  I  should  never  have  had  the  luck 
subsequently  to  command  the  Cavalry  Brigade, 
and  someone  else  wovdd  have  been  filling  my 
shoes  to-day,  and,"  he  added  with  characteristic 
modesty,  "  probably  filling  them  a   good   deal 
better." 

His  conduct  during  the  remainder  of  the  war 
belied  his  self -depreciation.  At  Colesberg,  with 
a  skeleton  force,  he  guarded  Cape  Colony  while 


Lords  Roberts  and  Kitchener  were  preparing 
for  the  great  offensive  movement  to  relieve 
Kimberley  and  Cecil  Rhodes,  and,  indirectly,, 
to  relieve  Ladysmith  and  Sir  George  White. 
It  was  French  who,  as  Lieut. -General,  com- 
manded the  cavalry  which  galloped  through  the 
Boers  at  Klip  Drift  and  raised  the  siege  of 
Kimberley.  From  Kimberley  he  was  called  by 
Lord  Kitchener  to  Paardeberg,  where  he  headed 
the  retreating  Cronje.  Throughout  the  re- 
mainder of  the  war  he  was  one  of  the  right- 
hand  men,  first  of  Lord  Roberts,  and  then  of 
Lord  Kitchener,  being  mentioned  in  dispatches 
eight  times. 

On  his  return  to  England  in  1902  he  com- 
manded the  1st  Army  Corps  at  Aldershot  until, 
in  1907,  he  succeeded  the  Duke  of  Connaught 
as  Inspector-General  of  the  Forces.  In  1911  he 
was  appointed  Chief  of  the  Imperial  General 
Staff.  The  ,  efficiency  of  the  British  Army, 
especially  the  Cavalry  (the  conversion  of  which 
into  motmted  infantry  he  had  strongly  and,  as 
it  turned  out,  very  properly  resisted),  was 
largely  due  to  his  exertions  and  ability. 

He  was  a  cool,  level-headed  soldier,  and — as 
his  action  in  resisting  the  tide  of  plausible 
opinion  which  was  for  relegating  the  lance  and 
sword  to  military  museums  had  shown — an 
independent  thinker.  Though  he  had  written 
little,  he  was  widely  read  in  military  history 
and  military  science.  He  had  attended  the 
French  manoeuvres,  and  was  liked  and  respected 
bj^  the  French  officers.     His  affection  for  their 


BRITISH    ARTILLERY    ON    THE    MARCH. 


[Photopriis. 


338 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


A    RAILWAY     WRECK.  [Sport  and  General. 

A  train  of  wounded  was  precipitated  into  tiie  River  Ourcq  near  Lizy,  caused  by  the  blowing 
up  of  a  bridge,  the  driver  believing  the  line  to  be  safe. 


nation  was  sincere  and  imdoubted.  Seventeen 
years  older  than  Cromwell  at  Marston  Moor, 
ten  years  older  than  Marlborough  when  he  took 
command  of  the  allied  forces  in  Holland  against 
Louis  XIV.,  fifteen  years  older  than  Sir  John 
Moore  at  the  date  of  the  latter's  daring  stroke 
against  the  commiinications  of  Napoleon  in  1808, 
seventeen  years  older  than  Wellington  on  the 
field  of  Waterloo,  and  five  years  younger  than 
Lord  Roberts  when  he  landed  at  the  Cape  in 
1900,  Field-Marshal  French  -was  about  to  under- 
take perhaps  the  most  dijfficult  and  momentous 
operation  ever  entrusted  to  a  British  General. 
Would  some  future  soldier  say  of  him  as  he  had 
said  of  Wolfe  in  the  January  preceding  the 
fateful  August  of  1914  : — "  WTiat  has  struck  me 
more  than  anything  in  reading  his  history  has 
been  the  extraordinary  fertility  of  his  brain  in 
the  ingenious  and  varied  forms  of  stratagem 
which  he  conceived  to  deceive  his  enemy  and 
effect  surprise  !  "  A  month  after  the  Expe- 
ditionary Force  landed  in  France,  Lord  Kit. 
chener,  his  old  conunander,  in  the  Hovise  of 
Lords,  was  referring  to  the  "  consvunmate  skill 
and  C8Jm  courage  of  Sir  John  French  in  the 
conduct  of  the  strategic  withdrawal  in  the  face 
of  vastly  superior  forces.  His  Majesty's  Govern- 
ment," pursued  Lord  Kitchener,  "  appreciated 


to  the  full  the  value  of  the  service  which  Sir 
John  French  had  rendered  to  this  country  and 
to  the  cause  of  the  Allies." 

The  order  to  mobiUze  was  issued  to 
the  British  generals  who  were  to  command 
the  Expeditionary  Force  on  August  4th,  while 
at  the  same  time  the  General  Post  Office 
delivered  to  the  Reservists  orders  for  rejoining 
their  regiments.  On  the  5th,  the  depots  were 
delivering  clothes  and  equipments  to  the 
Reservists  who,  clothed  and  equipped,  were 
dispatched  to  their  regiments.  Metinwhile, 
to  guard  against  alien  enemies  interfering  with 
the  railway  traffic,  the  Special  Service  Section 
of  the  Territorial  Force  w£vs  posted  on  the 
lines,  bridges,  culverts  and  cuttings  of  tho 
railroads.  All  Government  stores,  harbovu^, 
docks  and  transports  were  also  protected. 

By  the  incorporation  of  the  Reservists 
the  Army  was  stiffened  with  men  in  the  prime 
of  life,  who,  after  a  much  longer  term  of  dis- 
cipline than  that  of  soldiers  in  Continental 
Armies,  had  afterwards  been  forced  to  think 
and  act  for  themselves  in  the  various  exigencies 
of   civil   business. 

For  each  Reservist  the  clothes  and  equipment 
required  for  a  campaign  were  kept  in  readiness. 
The   boots   fvimished   were   the   best   milit«ury 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


339 


boots  in  the  world.  Times  had  changed 
since  George  Steevens,  referring  to  the  equipment 
of  the  British  contingent  sent  to  Omdurman, 
wrote  that  the  "  boots  our  British  troops  were 
expected  to  march  in  had  not  even  a  toe-cap," 
and  that  "  the  soles  peeled  off,  and  instead 
of  a  solid  double  sole  revealed  a  layer  of 
shoddy  packing  sandwiched  between  two 
thin  slices  of  leather." 

An  army  marches  not  only  on  its  feet  but  on 
its  belly,  and  both  facts  had  been  fully  appre- 
ciated. The  organization  for  feeding  the  men 
and  bringing  up  supplies  of  aU  kinds  in  the 
field  were  of  the  most  modern  kind.  Motor 
lorries  for  the  transport  of  stores  had  been 
abundantly  provided,  and  soon  the  roads 
of  France  were  to  be  traversed  with  autonlobiles 
and  vehicles  commandeered  from  the  commercial 
firms    of    Great    Britain    and   Ireland. 

Within  a  week  the  Expeditionary  Force 
was  ready  to  start  for  France.  This  was 
entirely  due  to  the  General  Staff  at  the  War 
Office,  and  the  fact  that  the  concentration  of  the 
troops  worked  with  machine -like  regularity 
showed  how  admirably  their  work  of  preparation 
had  been  done. 

The  next  step  was  to  transport  the  army  to 
the  seat  of  war.  The  railways  had  been  taken 
over  by  the  Government,  and  were  being  run 
with  the  assistance  of  a  Committee  of  Civilian 
Managers.  The  first  Army  Service  Corps 
unit  left  for  the  Lines  of  Conmaunication  at 
8  a.m.  on  the  initial  day  of  mobilization. 
Train  after  train  loaded  with  soldiers  passed 
to  the  ports  of  embarcation.  At  the  quays 
the  process  of  conveying  the  troops  and  ma- 
terials of  war  was  handed  over  to  the  Navy. 
How  the  Navy  performed  its  task  will  be 
described  in  a  subsequent  chapter.     Convoyed 


by  the  Fleet,  the  Expeditionary  Force  was 
carried  without  mishap  to  the  shores  of  France. 

At  Boulogne,  Havre,  and  the  other  points 
where  the  Expeditionary  Force  was  landed, 
and  where  in  advance  rest-camps  had  been 
prepared  for  it,  the  troops  were  received  with 
the  wildest  enthusiasm.  On  August  14th  the 
British  Commander-in-  Chief,  who  had  been 
met  on  his  landing  by  Comte  Daru,  arrived  at 
the  French  Headquarters,  and  the  next  day  he 
visited  Paris  to  pay  his  respects  to  the  President 
of  the  French  Republic. 

To  aid  intercourse  with  their  new  allies,  as 
few  of  the  privates  and  non-commissioned  officers 
could  speak  French,  the  men  had  been  given 
a  half-sheet  typewritten  French-English  dic- 
tionary, containing  the  words  which  it  was  most 
necessary  for  them  to  know,  and  a  staff  of 
interpreters  drawn  from  various  sources  in 
Great  Britain  was  provided  for  them. 

From  the  rest-camps,  almost  the  whole  of 
the  1st  and  2nd  Corps — the  3rd  Corps  had  not 
yet  arrived — proceeded  to  the  Belgian  frontier. 

It  was  in  a  gay  but  determined  spirit  that 
the  British  marched  to  meet  the  most  formid- 
able engine  of  war  ever  constructed  in  the  history 


A    FRENCH    RED    CROSS    TRAIN    WHICH    WAS    DERAILED    AND    PRECIPITATED 

^  INTO     THE     RIVER.  [Underwood  and  Underwood. 


340 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


of  man.  One  incident,  however,  had  cast  a 
momentary  gloom  over  the  Army ;  General 
Grierson,  who  commanded  the  2nd  Corps,  had 
died  of  heart  failure  on  the  17th  August.  No 
British  officer  was  better  acquainted  with  the 
merits  and  demerits  of  the  German  Army. 
Years  before  he  had  conveyed  to  his  fellow- 
soldiers  the  result  of  his  researches  on  Germany 
(in  his  "Armed  Strength  "  of  the  German  Armj^). 

He  was  fifty-foiir  years  old  at  the  date  of  his 
death.  His  place  was  filled  by  General  Sir 
Horace  Smith-Dorrien. 

The  position  assigned  to  the  British  Army  by 
General  Joffre  was  north  of  the  Sambre,  a  tribu- 
tary of  the  Meuse,  into  which  the  Sambre  flowed 
at  Namur,  a  Belgian  ring-fortress.  The  bulk  of 
the  Allied  Army  was  disposed  in  the  area 
bounded  on  the  west  by  the  Oise,  which  enters 
the  Seine  a  few  miles  below  Paris,  on  the  north 
by  the  Sambre,  on  the  east  by  the  Meuse,  and  on 
the  south  by  the  Seine,  and  by  its  northern 
tributary,  the  Aube,  The  headwaters  of  the 
Seine,  Aube  and  Meuse  are  on  or  near  the 
plateau  of  Langres,  which  was  guarded  by  the 
fortress  of  that  name.  Between  the  sources 
of  the  Aube  and  the  Meuse  rises  the  Mame, 
which,  traversing  Vitry,  Chalons-sur-Mame, 
Epemay,  Chateau  Thierry,  La  Ferte,  Meaux, 
enters  the  Seine  within  the  vast  entrenched 
camp  of  Paris. 

From  Vitry  the  Mame-Rhine  canal  started 
for  Strassburg,  also  the  terminus  of  the  Rhone- 
Rhine   canal.     At  La  Fert^   the  Petit  Morin, 


which  runs  through  Montmirail,  empties  itself 
from  the  south  into  the  Marne,  while,  between 
La  Ferte  and  Meaiix,  the  Marne  is  increased  from 
the  north  by  the  waters  of  the  Ourcq.  The 
Grand  Morin  from  the  south  joins  the  Mame 
below  Meaux. 

As  the  lower  courses  of  the  Seine,  Aube,  and 
Mame  flow  from  the  east  to  the  west,  and  their 
upper  courses  from  the  south  to  the  north, 
they  form  barriers  to  an  invader  coming  either 
from  the  north  or  from  the  east.  A  further 
natural  obstacle  to  an  invader  from  the  north 
is  a  tributary  of  the  Oise,  the  Aisne,  rising  in 
the  Argonne  Forest  hUls  which  lie  west  of  Ver- 
dun. Verdun  was  the  fortress  at  the  northern 
end  of  the  line  of  artificial  defences — Belfort- 
£pinal-Tovd- Verdun — stretching  from  the 
frontiers  of  Switzerland  to  the  latitude  of  the 
fortress  of  Metz  in  Lorraine,  which  faces  Verdun. 
The  natvu-e  of  this  line  of  artificial  defences  has 
been  described  in  Chapter  XXIII.  From  Verdun 
to  the  ring -fortress  of  Toul,  from  Epinal 
to  Belfort,  there  were  chains  of  isolated  and 
powerful  forts.  To  the  south,  behind  Epinal, 
commenced  that  movintain  barrier  which,  under 
various  names,  separates  the  vallej^s  of  the 
Saone  and  Rhone  from  the  rest  of  France.      ' 

In  the  Argonne  district  is  Valmy,  where  the 
Teutonic  invaders  of  France  in  1792  were 
finally  checked.  The  Aisne,  rising  from  the 
southern  end  of  the  Argonne,  flows  northward 
to  about  the  latitude  of  Longwy,  situated  in 
the  pocket  formed  by  the  frontiers  of  Belgium, 


GERMAN    OFFICERS    IN    AN    ELABORATE    SPLINTER-PROOF    ENTRENCHMENT. 

[Record  Pre  a. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


341 


BRITISH    SOLDIERS   IN    THE  TRENCHES. 

[Daily  Mirror. 


Luxemburg,  and  Germany.  It  then  turns 
westward  and,  passing  about  midway  between 
the  fortifications  of  Rheims  (due  north  of 
Epemay  on  the  Marne)  and  those  of  Laon, 
traverses  Soissons  and  joins  the  Oise  at  Com- 
piegne.  The  Aisne,  for  most  of  its  course,  is 
another  barrier  to  an  invader  from  the  north. 
On  the  Oise,  above  Compiegne  and  a  Uttle  to 
the  north-west  of  the  latitude  of  Laon,  was 
the  fortress  of  La  Fere.* 

In  the  oblong  formed  by  the  Oise  and  the 
upper  Sambre  on  the  east,  the  Seine  on  the 
south,  the  English  Channel  and  the  Straits  of 
Dover  on  the  west,  and  the  Franco -Belgian 
frontier  on  the  north,  the  chief  natural  obstacle 
to  an  invader  from  Belgium  was  the  River 
Somme,  which  rises  a  little  to  the  north  of  St. 
Quentin,  itself  fifteen  miles  north-west  of 
La  Fere.  The  Somme,  flowing  through  Amiens 
and  Abbeville,  divides  this  oblong  roughly 
into  two  halves.  In  the  southern  half,  on  the 
coast,  were  the  ports  of  Dieppe    and,  at  the 

*It  has  been  pointed  out  on  p.  443  that  the  fortresses  of 
fihelms,  Laon,  La  F^re.  Maubeuge,  and  Lille  had  not  been 
completed.     Maubeuge  alone  offered  a  serious  resistance. 


mouth  of  the  Seine,  Havre,  which  was  strongly 
fortified.  The  chief  ports  in  the  northern 
half  were  (from  south  to  north)  Boulogne, 
Calais,  and,  on  the  French  side  of  the  Belgian 
frontier,  Dunkirk.  The  two  latter  towns 
were  afforded  some  protection  by  forts. 

Half-way  between  Dunkirk  and  the  fortress 
of  Maubeuge  on  the  Sambre  was  the  unfinished 
fortress  of  Lille.  It  was  between  Lille  and  the 
northern  bank  of  the  Sambre  that  General 
Joffre  had  decided  that  the  British  Army 
should  be  stationed.  Assuming  that  the  German 
invasion  was  repulsed.  Sir  John  French's  forces 
would  be  within  easy  reach  of  Calais  and 
Boulogne,  two  of  their  ports  of  disembarca- 
tion,  and  their  base,  Havre.  Thrust  to  the 
vicinity  of  Paris,  they  could  draw  their  rein- 
forcements, munitions,  and  supplies,  if  necessary 
(which,  indeed,  happened),  through  Le  Mans 
from  St.  Nazaire  at  the  mouth  of  the  Loire. 
On  October  1  The  Times  published  the  text 
of  an  army  order  issued  by  the  Emperor  William 
on  August  19  : — 

"It  is  my  Royal  and  Imperial  Command 
that  you  concentrate  your  energies,  for  the 
immediate  present,  upon  one  single  purpose, 
and  that  is  that  you  address  all  your  skill 
and  all  the  valour  of  my  soldiers. to  exter- 
minate first  the  treacherous  English  and 
walk  over  General  French's  contemptible 
little  Army*.     .     .     ." 

"  Walk  over  "  our  Army,  forsooth  !  Did 
the  Kaiser  not  know  that  our  men  are  the 
descendants  of  those  who  fought  the  live- 
long day  at  Waterloo  till  the  tardy  arrival 
of  the  Prussians  enabled  them  to  advance 
and  drive  their  opponents  from  the  field  ? 
That  their  forebears  formed  the  immortal 
Light  Division  which  at  the  storming  of 
Badajos  could  not  win  their  way  up  the  deadly 
breach  yet  stood  for  hours  in  the  ditch,  a  prey 
to  shot  and  shell,  unable  to  go  forward,  but 
sternly  refusing  to  go  back ;  that  their  grand- 
fathers held  for  months  the  ridge  at  Delhi,  a 
mere  handful  compared  with  their  foes  within 
the  town,  and  that  they  finally  stormed  it 
with  a  force  which  was  not  a  third  of  the 
disciplined  men  who  manned  its  walls  ? 

What  does  Miifiiing  say  of  the  British  ? — that 
they  were  the  finest  troops  in  Europe  for  the 
day  of  battle.  Wliat  did  Marshal  Bugeaud  say  ? 
"  The  English  infantry  is  the  most  magnificent 
.  in  the  world  ;  happily  there  is  but  little  of  it." 
In  Belgivun,  at  any  rate,  there  was  enough  to 
hold   at   bay   four   times  its   own   strength   of 

*  The  authenticity  of  this  order  was  subseauently  denied  by  the 
German  Gfovemnient.  Nevertheless  an  order  of  almost  eaual  insolence 
was  issued  by  the  Crown  Prince  of  Bavaria  (see  The  Times,  October 
19,  1914). 


342 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


GERMAN    INFANTRY    ADVANCING. 


{DttUy  Mirror. 


Germans  and  dispute  with  the  greatest  courage 
every  yard  of  the  road  to  Paris. 

Against  the  Allied  Army  on  the  Sambre  was 
marching,  riding  or  motoring  a  vast  force 
of  Germans.  They  were  accompanied  by  an 
enormous  niimber  of  guns  and  mitrailleuses — 
some  mounted  on  armoured  automobiles — by 
a  flock  of  Taube  aeroplanes  and  some  airships, 
and  by  trains  of  pontoons.  Motor  ploughs  had 
been  provided  for  digging  trenches — and 
graves.  Imagine  that  all  the  inhabitants  of 
Birmingham  were  men  in  the  prime  of  life,  that 
they  were  dressed  in  a  viniform  which  rendered 
them  invisible  except  at  close  quarters  ;  that 
they  were  armed  with  repeating  rifles,  swords, 
lances,  automatic  pistols,  and  that,  attended  by 
doctors,  cooks,  portable  kitchens,  motor-omni- 
buses, traction  engines,  motor rlorries,  horses  and 
carts,  and  grave-diggers,  they  were  moving  in 
columns,  on  foot  or  on  horseback,  in  motor-cars 
or  char-k-bancs,  or  in  aeroplanes,  to  cross  or 
fly  over  the  Thames  from  Reading  to  Oxford. 
One  has  then  some  faint  idea  of  the  disciplined 
horde  advancing  on  the  Allies  deployed  from 
Conde  to  Namur.  The  following  description 
of  a  distinguished  French  artist  arrested  by 
the  Germans  near  Namur  enables  mb  to  catch  a 
glimpse  of  this  phenomenon  so  novel  in  the 
annals  of  humanity  : — 

After  sleeping  in  a  bam  with  Zouave  prisoners,  a 
soldier  standing  over  us  with  fixed  bayonet,  we  were 
called  at  5  the  next  morning.  The  prisoners  were 
told  to  peel  potatoes  for  the  field  kitchen.  I  made 
my  toilet  while  a  guard  followed  me  about.  At  6  all 
the  soldiers  began  to  form  up.  Orders  came  from  the 
officers  like  pistolshots,  the  click  of  heels  and  the 
thud  of  shoulder  arms  coming  as  from  one  man. 
Woe  to  the  man  slightly  out  of  line  1  The  close- 
cropped  officer  spat  at  him  a  flow  of  expletives, 
showing  his  teeth  like  a  tiger  ready  to  spring. 

I  was  placed  in  the  middle  of  a  marching  column, ' 
and  as  I  was  loaded  with  my  knapsack  and  coat 
(a  soldier  near  me  carrying  my  papers)  I  could  take 
part  in  the  sensations  of  the  men  under  the  iron 
discipline  of  the  officers.  The  road  lay  inches  thick 
of  chalky  dust,  which  rose  in  clouds  above  our  heads. 
Never  were  we  allowed  to  open  out  as  I  had  seen  the 


marching  Belgians  do,  and  let  the  air  circulate.  We 
plodded  on  the  whole  day,  the  only  rest  being  when 
there  was  an  occasional  block  on  the  road.  The 
march  was  as  if  on  parade.  Should  one  fall  out  of 
step  the  shouts  of  his  superior  soon  brought  him  up. 

Now  and  then  men  were  waiting  with  buckets  and 
as  the  column  swung  by  the  soldiers  dipped  in  their 
aluminium  cups.  Another  man  would  be  holding  a 
biscuit  tin  full  of  sweets,  or  it  might  be  handfuls  of 
prunes,  but  still  the  march  went  on.  It  was  remark- 
able to  see  the  field  post-office  at  work ;  the  armed 
blue-coated  i)ostmen  stood  by  the  marching  cplumn 
receiving  the  postcards  handed  to  them.  Sometimes 
an  officer  would  hand  over  a  fowling  piece  or  antique 
with  the  address  hanging  from  it. 

At  noon  I  was  handed  over  to  officers,  and  I  left  the 
regiment.  I  was  on  the  box  seat  of  a  char-il-banc 
full  of  officers  and  could  observe  the  marvellous 
organization  of  the  column.  The  pace  was  at  a  walk, 
but  continuous.  Ammunition  wagons,  field  pieces, 
carts  filled  with  flour,  whole  trains  of  enormous 
pontoons  pulled  by  heavy  horses,  and  great  traction 
engines  pulling  siege  guns,  landaus  and  motor-cars 
filled  with  doctors  and  officers,  whose  only  dis- 
tinguishing mark  is  a  strip  of  colour  at  the  neck — 
all  advanced  at  the  same  pace.  Should  a  slight 
block  occur  the  whole  column  would  stop  as  one 
train,  the  drivers  passing  the  message  back  by  a 
pumping  movement  made  with  the  fist  on  high. 
The  warning  of  a  declivity  or  bend  in  the  road  passed 
backwards  like  musketry  fire.  All  vehicles  belonged 
to  the  Army.  Some  had  chalked  on  their  grey  sides 
'•  Berlin-Paris." 

Sometimes  the  column  would  let  an  enormous  grey 
motor-omnibus  dash  by,  and  through  the  glass  sides 
I  saw  stafE  officers  bending  over  maps.  Every  driver 
and  service  man  carried  his  weapons,  the  great  wagons 
simply  bristling  with  rifles. 

On  our  way  we  passed  crowds  of  peasants  returning 
to  their  ruined  homes.  It  was  pitiful  to  see  them 
humbly  raise  their  hats  to  the  invaders.  We  passed 
many  villages  in  ruins.  Locked-up  houses  were 
instantly  broken  open  and  searched.  The  better- 
class  houses  were  pillaged  for  wine,  every  soldier 
marching  with  bottles  sticking  out  of  his  knapsack. 

A  French  aeroplane  daringly  flew  above  the  column, 
the  German  shrapnel  ineffectively  blunting  like  little 
balls  of  thistledown  underneath  it. 

At  last,  at  a  village  near  the  French  frontier,  I  was 
set  down  in  the  littered  mairie,  where,  at  a  long  table 
lighted  by  the  unshaded  Ught  of  lamps,  staff  officers 
were  quickly  writing,  giving  out  orders  between  tht 
puffs  of  cigarettes.  At  a  word  the  aides-de-camp 
stood  at  attention,  clicking  their  boots  and  their  hands 
at  the  side  Uke  a  statue.  Great  bundles  of  detailed 
maps  were  brought  in  and  distributed  for  the  following 


TEE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAB. 


343 


day's  march.  Then  the  room  was  left  to  the  clerks, 
who  were  writing  all  night,  with  a  bottle  of  wine  on  the 
tabl»  Broth  from  the  field  kitchen,  with  black  bread, 
hard  as  a  brick,  made  an  excellent  supper  with  a  bottle 
of  filched  Burgundy.  After  sleeping  in  the  open  hall, 
the  next  morning  I  was  given  papers  to  return,  one 
staff  officer  kindly  giving  me  the  used  half  of  his  mili- 
tary map. 

The  impression  I  gathered  from  conversation  with 
the  officers  was  angry  surprise  that  England  had  joined 
with  their  enemy.  One  said  he  was  sorry  for  the 
Belgians  and  even  for  the  French,  but  they  would 
never  forgive  England.  Even  superior  officers  were 
under  the  illusion  that  war  had  been  forced  upon 
them. 

We  have  seen  that  the  reason  why  the 
British  and  French  entered  Belgium  was  the 
very  natural  desire  to  help  the  Belgians.  They 
were  suddenly  struck  by  very  superior  forces 
and  compelled  to  fall  back  before  them,  while 
a  portion  of  the  Belgian  Army  retired  on 
Namaur. 

Namur,  like  Li^ge,  was  fortified  by  a  ring 
of  detached  forts  constructed  of  concrete, 
armed  with  6in.  guns  and  4.7  howitzers  behind 
arnxour-plated  turrets.  Unlike  Liege,  Namur 
had  a  considerable  time  to  strengthen  its  fortifi- 
cations. General  Michel,  who  commanded  the 
25,000  men  who  formed  its  garrison,  had  availed 
himself  of  the  respite  afforded  to  close  the 
intervals  between  the  forts,  by  trenches  covered 
in  front  by  barbed  wire  and  defended  by  mines 


along  the  likely  lines  of  approach.  To  over- 
come these  by  assault  would  have  been  a  costly 
process,  if  not  impossible,  and  the  tacti  cs  of  the 
first  few  days  of  the  operations  against  Liege  were 
not  repeated.  At  the  same  time  there  was  no 
intention  of  beginning  the  lengthy  process  of  a 
regular  siege.  At  Liege  it  seems  probable  that 
at  first  nothing  beyond  the  guns  and  howitzers 
forming  part  of  the  Army  were  employed. 
These  would  include  the  light  field  howitzer  and 
the  heavy  field  howitzer.  The  heavy  field  guns 
with  the  Army,  in  what  numbers  is  not  known, 
fired  a  361b.  shell.  Of  all  these  weapons 
the  heavy  howitzer  was  the  only  one 
capable  of  injuring  to  any  extent  the  cupolas 
in  the  forts.  For  the  first  part  of  the  attack, 
therefore,  the  iron  defences  of  the  forts  were 
quite  strong  enough  to  offer  good  resistance. 
The  fact  is  the  Germans  neither  thought  that 
the  Belgians  would  resist  the  passage  of  their 
Army  nor  that  the  forts  would  withstand  all 
efforts  to  take  them  by  assault.  Hence  they 
had  thrust  their  troops  into  Belgium  imperfectly 
mobilized  and  without  siege  guns.  The  weapons 
of  this  category,  when  they  did  reach  the  front, 
were  at  once  successfully  made  use  of.  These 
consisted  chiefly  of  two  classes,  the  21  and  the 
28cm.  calibre.  Both  of  these  weapons  fire  formid- 
able projectiles.  That  of  the  former  (equivalent 
in  calibre  to  an  8.4in.  English  gun)  is  a  shell  2501b 


A  GERMAN   SHELTER  TRENCH.  [^ift^. 

Removing  the  earth  dug  out  from  the  front,  so  as  not  to  indicate  its  position. 


344 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


BRITISH    WOUNDED    AWAITING    REMOVAL    TO    HOSPITAL    BASE. 

[London  News  Agency. 


which  contains  3  7  Jib.  of  high  explosive  in 
the  so-called  naine  shell,  or  12^1b.  in  the  case 
of  the  thick-walled  shell.  In  the  28cm.  (eqviiva- 
lent  to  11.2in.)  the  shell  weighs  7601b.,  the 
mine  shell  holds  1141b.  of  high  explosive,  the 
thick-walled  381b.  The  mine  shell,  from  its 
thinner  walls,  has  not  the  penetrative  power 
of  the  thicker-walled  pattern,  but  has  sufficient 
to  enable  it  to  penetrate  before  exploding. 
Both  of  these  it  will  be  seen  are  distinctly 
powerfiil  pieces.  The  28cm.  was  used  by  the 
Japanese  agadnst  Port  Arthur,  and  is  credited 
with  having  caused  great  damage  to  the  work, 
and  against  the  Riissian  fleet  in  the  harbour, 
and  a  few  were  afterwards  taken  to  the  front 
and  employed  against  the  Russian  lines  at 
Mukden. 

The  Sin.  «md  llin,  howitzers  can  both  be  fired 
from  the  wheeled  carriages  which  transport  them. 
The  illustrations  on  pages  349  and  358  show  one  of 
the  llin.  howitzers  when  arranged  for  transport 
and  whm  in  firing  position.  The  girdle  at- 
tached to  the  wheels  enables  it  to  move  more 
easily  over  bad  groimd.  It  is  usually  drawn  by 
an  automobile  tractor.  Its  total  weight  when 
in  action  is  nearly  15  tons,  that  of  the  8in. 
6  tons.  The  heaviest  weight  to  be  transported 
is  9J  and  4J  tons  respectively.  These  weights 
can  be  moved  along  any  ordinary  road  ^though 
the  heavier  one  might  try  some  country  bridges) 
and  may  be  described  as  mobile.    The   rsmges 


of  these  weapons    are   five   and    seven  ipiles 
respectively. 

But  it  is  a  very  different  thing  when  we  come 
to  the  42cm.  howitzer,  equivalent  to  16.  Sin. 
The  weight  of  this  piece  of  ordnance  is  21 J 
tons  approximately,  and  when  in  action  50  tons. 
It  can,  of  course,  be  quite  easily  transported 
by  raU,  but  the  task  of  moving  it  by  road 
would  be  quite  another  thing.  The  heaviest 
load  to  be  moved  would  probably  be  about 
32  tons,  and  ordinary  road  bridges  would  not 
bear  this  amount,  and  most  certainly  the 
howitzer  could  not  be  fired  from  its  travelling 
carriage.  Hence,  no  doubt,  the  concrete  founda- 
tions that  the  Germans  have  constructed  at 
various  points  where  they  might  consider  it 
likely  they  would  need  to  employ  them.  It 
fires  a  shell  weighing  about  2,5001b.  with  a 
high  explosive  bursting  charge  of  3801b. 
Now  it  seems  probable  that  some  of  these  may 
have  been  employed,  and  their  effect  would 
undoubtedly  be  great.  But  it  is  extremely 
doubtful  if  they  have  been  used  in  any  numbers. 
German  papers  say,  without  giving  figures,  that 
they  have  been  employed.  The  British  Vice- 
Consul  says  two  were  fired  against  Liege.  Two 
were  also  reported  as  being  seen  near  Waterloo 
on  September  21.  No  doubt  some  of  our 
readers  have  noticed  the  picture  of  a  shell  ex- 
hibited in  some  of  the  shops  in  London,  with 
a  record  of  the  brave  deeds  the  weapon  in 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


345 


BRITISH  WOUNDED  BEING  CONVEYED   TO  A  HOSPITAL  TRAIN. 

[London  News  Agency. 


question  had  done.  This,  though  professing  to 
be  a  1 6.  Sin.  shoU,  is  really  only  an  11.2in. 
From  Austria  it  is  stated  that  37  of  these 
ponderous  weapons  have  been  sent  to  Trent — a 
mountain  fortress  !  This  is  sheer  nonsense.  It 
wotild  be  as  reasonable  to  send  15in.  guns  to 
Walmer  Castle. 

According  to  General  Michel,  who  commanded 
at  Namur,  it  was  the  enormous  28cm.  guns 
that  destroyed  the  defences.  The  fire  was  so 
continuous  that  it  was  impossible  to  attempt 
to  repair  the  damage  done  to  the  im- 
provised defences  between  the  forts  against 
which  the  Germans  first  of  all  concentrated 
their  fii'e.  For  ten  hours  the  Belgian  infantry 
bravely  bore  the  fire  of  the  huge  shells,  supple- 
mented by  those  from  a  multitude  of  smaller 
weapons,  to  which  they  could  practically 
make  no  reply.  Any  man  who  raised  his 
head  above  the  shot-swept  parapets  was  im- 
mediately struck.  The  majority  of  the  officers 
were  killed,  and  at  last  a  general  sauve  qui  pent 
took  place  and  the  demoralized  troops  aban- 
doned their  positions,  thus  leaving  a  large 
gap  through  which  the  Germans  could  advance. 

Nor  did  the  forts,  on  which  the  Germans 
next  turned  their  fire,  fare  any  better.  It  has 
been  pointed  out  that  their  old-fashioned 
and  feeble  armament  was  useless  ;  it  was  simply 
snuffed  out.  Maizeret  in  fact  only  fired  ten 
shots  and  received  1,200  at  the  rate  of  20  a 


minute.  At  Marcjiovelette  75  men  were  killed 
in  the  batteries.  The  bombardment  of  fort 
Suarlee  commenced  on  Sunday  morniug» 
August  23,  and  it  fell  on  the  25th  at  five 
in  the  afternoon.  Three  German  batteries 
armed  with  the  28cm.  howitzer  fired  600 
shells  each  weighing  7501b.  on  the  23rd, 
1,300  on  the  24th,  and  1,400  on  the  25th  against 
it.  These  destroyed  the  whole  of  the  massive 
structure  of  concrete  and  wrecked  all  the 
turrets,  and  fxirther  resistance  Was  impossible. 
The  forts  of  Andoy  and  Cognel^e  suffered  a 
hke  fate.  (For  plan  of  Namur  defences, 
see  page  119.) 

The  number  of  the  28cm.  howitzers  employed 
is  said  to  have  been  32,  the  nearest  being 
three  miles  from  their  target,  a  range  at 
which  the  Belgian  guns  could  do  no  damage 
even  if  they  were,  which  is  scarcely  probable, 
able  to  identify  their  positions.  Probably 
also  some  42cm.  (i.e.,  16.8  in.)  weapons  were 
these,  though  not  according  to  General  Michel. 

The  German  troops  engaged  on  the  siege, 
which  commenced  on  August  20,  though  not 
in  all  its  vigour  till  the  next  day — doubtless 
becaiose  it  had  been  impossible  to  prepare  all 
the  positions  for  the  artillery  till  the  21st — 
numbered  some  four  Army  Corps. 

Thus  it  is  seen  that  the  German  fire  literally 
swept  off  the  face  of  the  earth  forts  and  impro- 
vised defences,  troops  and  guns. 


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348 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Another  fact  which  much  affected  the  defence 
was  that  on  the  south  of  the  town  the  Germans 
managed  to  open  the  lock  gates  of  the  Meuse, 
thus  lowering  its  waters  and  destroying  the 
water  defence  of  Namur  and  allowing  their 
troops  to  enter  the  town. 

For  four  days  and  a  half  the  Belgians  with- 
stood the  attack  of  the  Germans,  ten  times 
more  numerous  than  they  were.  When  General 
Michel  saw  that  further  resistance  was  impossible 
without  entaiUng  the  loss  of  the  whole  garrison, 
he  tried  to  bring  in  the  troops  from  the  different 
forts  ;  but,  owing  imdoubtedly  to  the  help  of 
traitors  or  spies,  he  found  his  underground 
telephone  destroyed  and  could  not  do  so. 
To  secure  the  retreat  of  as  many  as  possible 
the  commanders  of  each  regiment  fought  their 
way  out  of  Namiir  separately,  thus  losing  a 
great  number  of  men. 

General  Michel,  the  staff,  his  officers,  and 
soldiers  did  all  they  possibly  could  to 
defend  the  town  and  they  could  do  no  more. 
He  has  been  much  criticized  for  having 
retreated,  but  if  the  garrison  had  remained 
12  hours  more  in  Namur,  not  a  man,  not  a 
horse,  not  a  gun  would  have  been  able  to  join 
the  main  army. 

The  troops  thus  saved  were  gained  for 
Belgium ;  to  have  clung  with  them  to  Namur 


WANTON    DKSlKLCriON    CAUSED    BY 
GERMAN    SOLDIERS    IN    A    CHATEAU 

NEAR  MALINES. 

[Daily  Mirror. 


would  have  been  to  lose  them  for  no  adequate 
purpose   or  sound  military  reason. 

The  Germans  had  seized  the  fortress  in  the 
angle  formed  by  the  junction  of  the  Meuse 
and  Sambre,  and  the  railway  back  to  Aix-la- 
ChapeUe  was  in  their  hands.  It  was  part  of 
their  plan  to  throw  huge  bodies  of  troops 
across  the  Meuse  between  Verdun  and  Namur, 
and  across  the  Sambre  between  Namur  and 
Maubeuge.  We  take  the  operations  on  the 
Sambre  first. 

From  August  15  important  French  forces  had 
been  pouring  into  Belgium — ^as  they  had  done  in 
1815 — through  Charleroi  between  Maubeuge 
and  Namur.  Moving  in  the  direction  of 
Gembloux,  French  troops  had  passed  over 
the  battlefield  of  Ligny,  the  last  of  Napo- 
leon's victories  over  the  Prussians.  From  a 
communique  of  August  24  it  is  clear  that  it  was 
General  Joffre's  intention  to  take  the  offensive 
at  almost  all  points  along  the  gigantic  line  of 
battle  from  Conde  to  Belfort.  "  An  army,"  so 
runs  that  docviment,  "  advancing  from  the 
northern  part  of  the  Woevre  "  (the  forest  land 
east  of  Verdun)  "  and  moving  on  Neuf chateau  " 
(in  the  Belgian  Ardennes)  "  is  attacking  the 
German  forces  which  have  been  going  through  the 
Duchy  of  Luxemburg  and  are  on  the  right  bank 

of  the  Semoy Another  army  from  the  region 

of  Sedan  is  traversing  the  Belgian  Ardennes 
and  attacking  the  German  forces  marching 
between  the  Lesse  and  the  Metise.  A  third 
army  from  the  region  of  Chimay  has  attacked 
the  German  right  between  the  Sambre  and  the 
Meuse.  It  is  supported  by  the  English  Army 
from  the  region  of  Mons." 

As  alreewly  mentioned,  Alsace  and  Southern 
Lorraine  had  been  invaded  by  the  French. 

The  siirprise  attack  (on  August  20)  on  the 
French  Army  in  Southern  Lorraine,  where  the 
loth  Corps,  recruited  in  the  south  of  France, 
had  been  severely  handled  by  overwhelming 
German  forces  from  the  region  of  Metz,  and  the 
German  occupation  of  Lun6ville  had  effectually 
stopped  the  French  offensive  south  of  Verdun. 
We  have  now  to  explain  the  cause  of  the  French 
failiire  on  the  Middle  Meuse  and  the  Sambre. 

On  the  15th  a  division  of  the  Prussian  Guard 
and  the  5th  Division  of  Cavalry,  with  several 
battalions  of  infantry  and  companies  of  mitrail- 
leuses, had  crossed  the  Meuse  at  Dinant 
between  Givet  and  Namur.  Suddenly  they 
were  attacked  by  the  French  and  driven  in  the 
gre  vtest  disorder  into  or  across  the  river. 
A  regiment  of  chasseurs  a  chevcU  pursued  them 
for  several  miles,  putting  to  flight  superior 
forces  of  cavalry  covering  the  retreat.  This 
small  victory  elated  the  French. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


349 


INTERIOR    OF    BARGY    CHURCH   WRECKED    BY    THE    GERMANS. 

[Sport  and  General. 


The  next  day  the  French  officials  had  bad 
news  to  report.  The  French,  defeated  in 
Lorraine,  were  retiring  on  Nancy,  and  the 
Germans  had  occupied  Brussels.  Reports 
came  in  that  the  enemy's  cavalry  were 
pushing  forward  in  the  direction  of  Ghent 
and  the  Franco-Belgian  frontier.  The 
Germans  were  about  to  laimch  their  hosts 
on  the  Franco -Belgians  in  and  around  Namur, 
on  the  French  along  the  Sambre  from 
Namur  to  Maubeuge,  and  the  British  around 
Mons. 

The  Germans  attacked  Charleroi  itself,  a  city 
of  some  30,000  inhabitants,  the  centre  of  the 
South  Belgian  iron  industry,  a  town  and  neigh- 
bourhood reminding  British  visitors  of  the 
Black  Country.  Lofty  chimneys,  furnaces, 
iron-foundries,  glass-works  attested  the  change 
that  had  come  over  the  world  since  Napoleon 
rode  through  Charleroi  on  June  15,  1815. 
At  seven  o'clock  on  Friday,  August  21, 
1914,  a  score  of  German  Hussars  entered  the 
town,  and,  pretending  to  be  British  cavalry, 
cantered  towards  the  Sambre.  They  were 
detected  by  a  French  officer  and  promptly 
expelled  with  the  loss  of  two  killed  and  three 
wounded.  The  inhabitants  were  ordered  to 
their  houses,  mitrailleuses  posted  at  different 
places  in  the  town,  and  every  pceparation  made 


to  defend  it.  Fighting  was  going  on  towards 
Genappo. 

On  Saturday  the  Germans  assaulted  Charle- 
roi, and  the  bridges  above  and  below  it  at 
Thuin  and  Chatelet  respectively.  Their  artil- 
lery had  opened  on  Charleroi  and  Thuin  the 
day  before.  The  Germans  forced  ten  miners 
to  march  at  the  head  of  their  column,  just  as  at 
Mons  they  forced  Belgian  women  to  precede  the 
colunms  attacking  the  British.  On  Sunday 
there  was  a  desperate  struggle  in  the  streets  of 
Charleroi  itself,  and  on  Monday  a  terrific  hand- 
to-hand  encounter  between  the  Turcos  and  the 
Prussian  Guard.  The  coloured  troops  from 
Algeria  and  Senegal  inflicted  heavy  losses  on 
the  Germans,  but  quick-firers  placed  in  a 
ruined  factory  appear  speedily  to  have  decided 
the  combat  in  favour  of  the  enemy.  The 
Sambre,  from  Namur  to  the  environs  of 
Maubeuge,  was  in  the  possession  of  the 
Germans  ;  their  advance  to,  and  crossing  of 
the  Meuse  will  be  described  later.  We  turn  now 
to  the  position  of  the  British  Army,  north  of 
the  Sambre  between  Maubeuge  and  Conde. 

The  concentration  of  the  1st  and  2nd  corps 
of  the  British  Army  had  been  completed  by 
Friday,  the  21st  August,  and  during  Saturday, 
the  22nd,  Sir  John  French  took  up  a  position 
extending  from  the  fortress  of  Conde,  a  few  miles 


350 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


MAXIM     SECTION     ON     THE     MARCH. 
Mules    are   used   for   the   transport   of   these   guns. 


[Record  Press. 


to  the  north  of  Valenciennes,  through  Mons, 
to  Binche  on  the  east. 

The  second  corps,  now  commanded  by  Sir 
Horace  Smith-Dorrien,  occupied  the  line  from 
Conde  to  Mons,  the  right  of  the  third  Division, 
which  was  under  General  H.  I.  W.  Hamilton, 
one  of  Lord  Kitchener's  most  trusted  officers, 
being  at  Mons  itself.  The  Ist  corps,  \uider 
General  Sir  Douglas  Haig,  formed  the  right 
wing  of  the  army.  Both  Sir  Horace  Smith- 
Dorrien  and  Sir  Douglas  Haig  were  dis- 
tinguished and  experienced  officers. 

The  son  of  a  colonel,  and  bom  on  the  26th 
of  May,  1858,  Sir  H.  Smith-Dorrien  was  fifty, 
six  years  old.  The  brother  of  the  "  King  of 
the  Scilly  Islands,"  he  came  of  a  weU -known 
west  coimtry  family.  He  had  been  educated 
at  Harrow  and  at  Sandhiirst,  and  had  been 
a  Staff  College  man,  and  a  brilliant  student 
of  the  art  of  war.  He  was  a  devotee  to  sport, 
a  first-rate  rider,  and  an  athlete.  In  1879  he 
had  been  through  the  Zulu  War,  and  had  been 
mentioned  in  dispatches.  He  had  fought  in 
Egypt  and  the  Sudan,  and  from  1893  to  1898, 
he  had  been  in  India,  where  he  had  served  with 
distinction  in  the  Chitral  Relief  Force,  and  also 
during  the  Tirah  Campaign.  He  had  accom- 
panied Lord  Kitchener  to  Omdvu-man,  and  had 
held  high  command  during  the  South  African 
War  when,  at  the  age  of  forty-one,  he  was 
promoted  Major-General  "  for  distinguished 
services  in  the  field."  From  1901  to  1903  he 
was  Adjutant-General  in  India,  and  from  1903 
to  1907,  during  the  Kitchener  regime,  he  com- 
manded the  4th  (Quetta)  Division.  In  1907  he 
became  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Aldershot 


Command.  He  was  not  a  blind  admirer  of 
the  Germans.  "  Give  me,"  he  is  reported  to 
have  said,  "  a  thousand  Colonials,  men  well 
acquainted  with  the  rifle  and  expert  in  horse- 
manship ;  let  me  train  them  for  six  months, 
and  I  would  lead  them  against  any  equal 
number  of  men  from  any  Continental  army 
with  the  greatest  confidence  in  the  result." 
He  was  respected  and  loved  by  -the  rank  and 
file.  While  at  Aldershot  he  had  abolished,  the 
military  police  and  lightened  the  punishments. 
He  had  put  the  private  on  his  honour,  and,  as 
much  as  any  commanding  officer,  he  had  helped 
to  produce  that  change  in  the  British  Army 
which  had  been  so  noticeable  since  the  South 
African  War.  Wellington  had  called  his -troops 
''  thescum  "  ;  the  soldiers  who  fought  at  Mons 
were  "  the  salt  of  the  earth."  General  Smith- 
Dorrien  had  walked  over  many  of  the  battle- 
fields of  Europe,  and  was  already  thoroughly 
familiar  with  the  terrain  roimd  Mons.* 

The  5th  Cavalry  Brigade,  led  by  Sir  Philip 
Chetwode,  was  placed  at  Binche  (a  little  manu- 
facturing town  of  less  than  10,000  inhabitants, 
to  cover  the  right.  As  the  3rd  Corps  had  not 
arrived,  the  reserve  was  formed  by  the  fovir 
brigades  of  the  Cavalry  Division,  which  also 
furnished  parties  to  protect  the  British  right. 
They  were  commanded  by  General  Allenby. 
Since  the  cavalryman  had  been  trained  to  use 
the  rifle  this  body  might  be  handled  as  a 
reserve  of  mounted  infantry. 

To  guard  the  front  of  the  position  and  watch 

for  any  forward  movement  of  the  Germans  was 

the  task  of  Sir  Philip  Chetwode  with  the  5th 

*  A  biooapbr  of  Sir  Douglas  Uaig  will  appear  in  the  next 
number. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


351 


Cavalry  Brigade,  assisted  by  a  few  squadrons 
from  the  reserve.  During  the  22nd  and  the 
23rd  the  reconnoitring  cavalry  penetrated  as 
far  as  Soignies  on  the  road  which  leads  from 
Mons,  past  Hal  (to  the  left  of  the  battlefield  of 
Waterloo)  to  Brussels.  The  cavalry  confirmed 
the  siormise  of  the  French  that  little  more  than 
one  corps  or,  at  most,two  corps  of  the  Germans 
were  opposed  to  the  British.  The  reports  of 
scouting  airmen, pointed  to  the  same  conclusion. 

The  battle  began  on  Sunday,  23rd.  At  3  p.m. 
reports  reached  Sir  John  French  that  the  enemy 
were  concentrating  on  the  line  between  Mons  and 
Bray,  to  the  west  of  Binche,  and  were  attacking 
briskly.  Severe  fighting  ensued  along  the  Conde- 
Mons  Canal.  Sir  Douglas  Haig  withdrew  his 
troops  to  some  high  ground  behind  Bray,  and 
Binche  was  evsicuated  by  Sir  Philip  Chetwode's 
Brigade,  which  moved  slightly  to  the  south.  The 
Germans  promptly  occupied  Binche.  The  result 
was  that  the  right  of  General  Hamilton's  Division 
in  Mons  formed,  to  use  Sir  John  French's  expres- 
sion, "  a  somewhat  dangerous  salient."  Accord- 
ingly the  Commander-in-Chief  directed  that  the 
centre  should  be  drawn  back  behind  Mons. 
This  was  effected  before  nightfall. 

To  some  of  the  British  soldiers  the  battle  had 
come  as  a  surprise.  "We  thought,"  said  one 
of  them,  "  the  Germans  were  fifteen  miles 
away,  when  suddenly  some  German  aeroplanes 
wheeled  over  us,  and  soon  afterwards  the 
artillery  opened  fire,  before  my  regiment  had 
time  to  take  cover." 


Among  the  accounts  of  the  battle  on  Sunday 
around  Mons  we  select  that  of  Sergeant  W. 
Loftxis,  which  gives  a  vivid  picture  of  the 
essential  features  of  the  fighting. 

"  Well,"  he  says,  "  we  know  what  it  is  like  to  be  in 
a  battle.  It  came  to  us  unexpectedly  at  a  time 
when  we  had  given  up  hope  of  seeing  any  Germans. 
The  first  inkling  we  had  of  it  was  just  after  '  reveille,* 
when  our  cavalry  pickets  fell  back  and  reported  the 
presence  of  the  enemy  in  strength  on  our  front 
and  slightly  to  the  left.  In  a  few  minutes  we 
were  all  at  our  posts  without  the  slightest  confusion 
and  as  we  lay  down  in  the  trenches  our  artillery 
opened  on  the  beggars  in  fine  style. 

"  Soon  they  returned  the  compliment ;  but  they 
were  a  long  time  finding  anything  approaching  the 
range,  and  they  didn't  know  of  shelters,  a  trick  we 
learned  from  the  Boers,  I  believe.  After  about  half 
an  hour  of  this  work  their  infantry  came  into  view 
along  our  front. 

"  They  were  in  solid  square  blocks,  standing  out 
sharply  against  the  skyline,  and  you  couldn't  help 
hitting  them.  It  was  like  butting  your  head  against 
a  stone  wall. 

"  We  lay  in  our  trenches  with  not  a  sound  or  sign 
to  tell  them  of  what  was  before  them.  They  crept 
nearer  and  nearer,  and  then  our  officers  gave  the 
word. 

"  A  sheet  of  flame  flickered  along  the  line  of  trenches 
and  a  stream  of  bullets  tore  through  the  advancing 
mass  of  Germans.  They  seemed  to  stagger  like  a 
drunk  man  suddenly  hit  between  the  eyes,  after  which 
they  made  a  run  for  us,  shouting  some  outlandish 
cry  that  we  couldn't  make  out. 

"  Half-way  across  the  open  another  volley  tore 
through  their  ranks,  and  by  this  time  our  artillery 
began  dropping  shells  around  them.  Then  an  officer 
gave  an  order  and  they  broke  into  open  formation, 
rushing  like  mad  towards  the  trenches  on  our  left. 

"  Some  of  our  men  continued  the  volley  firing,  but 
a  few  of  the  crack  shots  were  told  off  to  indulge  in 
independent  fliring  for  the  benefit  of  the  Germans 


BRIT|SH  SOLDIERS  FIXING  A  MACHINE  GUN  IN  POSITION.       [pmo  Press. 


352 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


NIGHT    FIGHT    IN    THE    STREET    OF    LANDRECIES. 


(see  p.  472) 


That  is  another  trick  taught  us  by  Brother  Boer,  and 
our  Germans  did  not  like  it  at  all. 

"  They  fell  back  in  confusion,  and  then  lay  down 
wherever  cover  was  available.  We  gave  them  no 
rest,  and  soon  they  were  on  the  move  again  in  flight. 

"  Then  came  more  furious  shelling  of  our  trenches, 
and  after  that  another  mad  rush  across  the  open  on 
our  front.  This  time  they  were  strongly  supported 
by  cavalry,  who  suffered  terribly,  but  came  right 
up  to  our  lines. 

"  We  received  them  in  the  good  old  way,  the  front 
ranks  with  the  bayonet  and  the  rear  ranks  keeping 
up  incessant  fire  on  them.  After  a  hard  tussle  they 
retired  hastily,  and  just  as  they  thought  themselves 
safe  our  mounted  men  swooped  down  on  them,  cut- 
ting them  right  and  left. 

"  This  sort  of  thing  went  on  through  the  whole  day 
without  bringing  the  Germans  any  nearer  to  shifting  us. 
After  the  last  attack  we  lay  down  in  our  clothes  to  sleep 
as  best  we  could,  but  long  before  sunrise  were  called  out 
to  be  told  that  we  had  got  to  abandon  our  position. 

"  Nobody  knew  why  we  had  to  go  ;  but  like  good 
soldiers  we  obeyed,  without  a  murmur.  The  enemy's 
cavalry,  evidently  misunderstanding  our  action, 
came  down  on  us  again  in  force  ;  but  our  men  behaved 
very  well  indeed,  and  they  gave  it  up  aa  a  bad  job. 


"  Their  losses  must  have  been  terrible.  Little 
mounds  of  dead  were  to  be  seen  all  along  the  line 
of  their  advance  to  the  attack,  and  in  the  retreat 
we  picked  off  their  cavalry  by  the  score." 

From  Sergeant  Loftus's  narrative,  it  might 

almost  seem  that  the  British  had  the  fighting 

all  their  own  way.     A  man  wounded  at  Mons 

paints  a  very  different  scene : — 

"We  were  in  the  trenches  waiting  for  them,"  he  says, 
"  but  we  didn't  expect  anything  like  the  smashing 
blow  that  struck  us.  AU  at  once,  so  it  seemed,  the 
sky  began  to  rain  down  bullets  and  sheUs.  At  first 
the  shells  went  very  wide,  for  their  fire  was  bad,  but 
after  a  time — I  think  it  was  a  long  time — they  got  our 
range  and  then  they  fairly  mopped  us  up.  I  saw  shells 
bursting  to  right  and  left  of  me  and  I  saw  many  a  good 
comrade  go  out." 

The  German  artillery  fire  was  directed  by 
airmen  who  dropped  smoke  bombs  over  the 
British  trenches  which  were  not  easy  to  locate, 
because  dummy  trenches  had  been  made  before 
or. behind  those  in  which  the  men  lay.     The 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


353 


power  and  accviracy  of  the  enemy's  artillery 
impressed  most  of  the  eye-witnesses,  but  there 
were  exceptions.  "  They  couldn't  hit  the  gas- 
works at  Mons,"  a  man  of  the  Berkshires  told  a 
Times  correspondent.  "  If  they  had,  I  wouldn't 
be  here.  .  .  .  They  couldn't  get  it  fair, 
and  just  as  well  for  us  they  didn't,  or  we'd  have 
been  all  blown  up."  On  the  other  hand,  the 
shooting  of  the  British  artillery  was  deadly  and 
accurate,  the  big  siege  guns  of  the  Royal 
Garrison  Artillery  playing  havoc  among  the 
Germans. 

We  complete  our  account  of  the  first  day's 
fighting  with  the  narrative  of  a  Belgian  corre- 
spondent, and  a  detailed  account  of  the  struggle 
to  the  south  of  Mons  by  a  Gordon  Highlander 
named  Smiley.     The  Belgian  writes — 

By  the  most  wonderful  chance  1  happened  to  be  in 
the  British  lines  in  Belgium  just  when  the  great  battle 
of  Charleroi  began,  a  fight  that  will  remain  inscribed 
in  letters  of  blood  on  the  scroll  of  History. 
.  .  .  It  was  at  Mons,  on  Saturday,  August  22nd. 
The  first  outpost  engagements  were  beginning,  and  the 
British  troops,  who  had  only  arrived  on  the  scene  the 
same  morning,  inamediately  entered  the  battle  without 
even  a  moment's  rest.  In  a  few  hours  Mons  was  put 
in  a  state  of  defence,  and  you  should  have  seen  those 
fellows  working.  Trenches  were  dug  and  the  bridges 
barricaded  by  eager  hands.  In  sight  of  such  willing- 
ness and  such  irresistible  gaiety,  you  would  never  have 
thought  that  these  men  were  on  the  eve  of  a  terrible 
battle.  Personally  I  could  not  help  feeling  that  I  was 
only  watching  a  manoeuvre  scene,  for  the  phlegm  and 
the  nonchalance  of  these  soldiers  would  never  have 
permitted  one  to  suppose  that  the  enemy  were  only 
a  few  miles  away. 


Smiley 's  report  on  what  he  saw  is,  perhaps,  the 

most  detailed  of  the  narratives  that  have  reached 

us.    It  was  illustrated  by  the  accompanying  plan* 

You  want  an  account  of  my  fighting.  This  shall  be 
true  of  all  I  saw  and  shall  apply  only  to  Mons,  because 
I  have  absolutely  no  coherent  remembrance  of  Cam- 
brai.  The  hurricane  of  shell  there  has  left  me  be- 
numbed even  yet,  and  I  do  not  yet  realize  that  I  am 
home.       Our  position  : — ■ 


ff'orestj 


Reference. 

J  _  \/ ill  age  defended 
by.Q)..R.Iri'sh  RegrP 

(^-.Middlesex 
S)-  Gordons 
@.  R.F.A. 

We  marched  out  of  our  billets  at  4  a.m.  We 
marched  up  to  No.  1  and  wheeled  to  the  right,  which 
fetched  us  on  the  main  Paris  road  (Rue  Mons),  with 
Mons    itself    somewhat    half-left    on  our    rear.     We 


THE     GRAVEYARDS     OF    THE     BATTLEFIELDS.  [News  Illustrations. 

Three  hundred  Germans  were  buried  in  this  one  huge  grave,  and  a  similar  number 

of  French  in  another. 


354 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR 


immediately  set  about  clearing  the  foregromid  of 
willows,  beans,  wheat,  and  anything  which  gave  head 
cover.  About  10  a.m.  we  had  (except  buildings)  a  clear 
rifle  range  of  quite  2,000  yards.  We  then  dug  our 
trenches,  and  much  labour  and  love  we  put  into  them- 

The  ball  opened  at  11.30  a.m.  by  a  terrible  artillery 
duel  by  the  Germans  over  our  trenches  to  No.  5. 
This  went  on  for  some  hours,  until  a  movement  of 
infantry  was  seen  at  No.  6.  This  movement  was 
evidently  intended  for  the  Gordons ;  as  you  will  see 
that  had  they  managed  to  reach  the  wood  in  front  of 
us  (No.  7),  our  position  (No.  4)  would  have  been  made 
untenable  by  hidden  infantry  and  well-served  artillery, 
who  could  have  flanked  us  merely  by  sheer  weight  of 
numbers. 

However,  we  opened  the  ball  on  them  at  No.  6  with 
a  terrific  Maxim  fire.  Poor  devils  of  infantry  !  They 
advanced  in  companies  of  quite  150  men  in  files  five 
deep,  and  our  rifle  has  a  flat  trajectory  up  to  600  yards. 
Guess  the  result.  We  could  steady  our  rifles  on  the 
trench  and  take  deliberate  aim.  The  first  company 
were  simply  blasted  away  to  Heaven  by  a  volley  at 
700  yards,  and  in  their  insane  formation  every  bullet 
was  almost  sure  to  find  two  billets.  The  other  com- 
panies kept  advancing  very  slowly,  using  their  dead 
comrades  as  cover,  but  they  had  absolutely  no  chance, 
and  at  about  5  p.m.  their  infantry  retired. 

We  were  stiU  being  subjected  to  a  terrible  artiUery 
fire.  God  !  how  their  artillery  do  fire.  But  we  had 
time  to  see  what  was  happening  on  our  left  flank  1,  2, 


and  3.  The  Royal  Irish  Regiment  had  been  surprised 
and  fearfully  cut  up,  and  so,  too,  had  the  Middlesex, 
and  it  was  found  impossible  for  our  B  and  C  companies 
to  reinforce  them.  We  (D  company)  were  IJ  miles 
away  and  were  ordered  to  proceed  to  No.  2  and  reUeve 
the  Royal  Irish  as  much  as  possible.  We  crept  from 
our  trenches  and  crossed  to  the  other  side  of  the  road, 
where  we  had  the  benefit  of  a  ditch  and  the  road 
camber  as  cover.  We  made  most  exceUent  progress 
until  150  yards  from  No.  1.  At  that  distance  there 
was  a  small  white  house,  flush  with  the  road,  standing 
in  a  clearance.  Our  young  sub.  was  lesiding  and 
safely  crossed  the  front  of  the  house.  Immediately 
the  Germans  opened  a  hellish  cyclone  of  shrapnel  at 
the  house.  They  could  not  see  us,  but  I  guess  they 
knew  the  reason  why  troops  would  or  might  pass  that 
house.  However,  we  were  to  relieve  the  R.I.'s,  and, 
astounding  as  it  may  seem,  we  passed  that  house  and 
I  was  the  only  one  to  be  hit.  Even  yet  I  am  amazed 
at  our  luck. 

By  this  time  diisk  had  set  in,  four  villages  were  on 
fire,  and  the  Germans  had  been,  and  were,  sheUing 
the  hospitals.  We  managed  to  get  into  the  R.I.'s 
trench  and  beat  off  a  very  faint-hearted  Uhlan  attack 
on  us.  About  9  p.m.  came  our  orders  to  retire. 
What  a  pitiful  handful  we  were  against  that  host, 
and  yet  we  held  the  flower  of  the  German  Army  at 
bay  all  day  !  We  picked  up  a  dead  officer  of  otu-s 
and  retreated  all  night.  At  2  a.m.  we  halted,  and  at 
4  a.m.  (Monday)  we  started  retiring  again. 


CHAPTER  XX. 


THE    RETREAT  TO   THE    MARNE. 


Causes  of  the  British  Retreat — The  French  for  the  Moment  Unable  to  Support  British — 
The  German  Pursuit — Action  of  Landrecies — Battle  of  Le  Cateau — Laudatory  Criti- 
cisms OF  A  German  Staff  Officer  on  British  Forces — ^Achievements  of  Royal  Flying 
Corps — Fighting  in  the  Valley  of  the  Meuse  from  Namur  to  Verdun — Battle  of  Charle- 
viLLE — French  Aviators  drop  Bombs  on  Zeppelin  Hangar  at  Metz — Cavalry  Combats 
BErvVEEN  British  and  Germans  :  Sir  Philip  Chetwode's  Charge — The  New  French 
Cabinet — Interview  between  General  Joffre  and  Sir  John  French — Decision  to  Retire 

ON   THE    MarNE CoUNTER-OfFENSIVE     OF     FRENCH     ArmIES     TO     PROTECT     BRITISH      ReTREAT 

Battle  of  Guise — British  Capture  Twelve  Guns  at    CoMPifecNE — Retreat   of  the   Allies 

BEHIND   the     MaRNE RESULTS  OF  THE  CAMPAIGN  FROM    THE  BRITISH  STANDPOINT. 


SERGEANT  LOFTUS,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered, could  not  understand  why 
he  and  the  other  soldiers  had  to  retire 
from  Mons.  The  reason  for  the  retreat 
was  this.  At  5  p.m.  on  the  Sunday  Sir  John 
French  had  received  a  "  most  important  message 
from  General  Joffre  by  telegram."  It  appeared 
that  three  German  corps — a  reserve  corps,  the 
4th  and  9th  corps — were  moving  on  the  British 
front,  and  that  the  2nd  corps  was  engaged  in  a 
turning  movement  on  the  left  from  the  direction 
of  .Tournai;  also  the  Germans  had  gained 
possession  of  the  passages  of  the  Sambre 
between  Charleroi  and  Namur,  and  two  reserve 
French  divisions  and  the  5th  French  Army  on 
Sir  John  French's  right  were  in  full  retreat. 
The  accuracy  of  this  information  was  confirmed 
by  aeroplane  reconnaissance,  and  Sir  John 
determined  to  withdraw  his  army  to  a  position 
which  had  been  previously  reconnoitred.  It 
rested  on  the  fortress  of  Maubeuge  on  the  right, 
and  exteaded  west  to  Jenlain,  south-east  of 
Valenciennes,  on  the  left,  but  it  was  difficult  to 
hold,  because  standing  crops  and  buildings, 
made  the  siting  of  trenches  very  difficult,  and 
limited  the  field  of  fire  in  many  important 
localities.  Nevertheless  it  contained  some  good 
artillery  positions. 

The  Germans,  commanded  by  Von  Kluck,  gave 
the  British  no  rest  in  the  small  hours  of  August 


24,  and  continuous  fighting  occurred  during  the 
night,  the  Germans  at  various  points  Qpiploy- 
ing  powerful  searchlights  to  assist  their  attack. 
To  cover  the  retreat  of  Sir  Horace  Smith- 
Dorrien's  Corps  (the  2nd)  from  the  line  Conde- 
Mons,  Sir  John  French,  who  had  posted  himself 
with  his  staff  at  Bavai,  proposed  to  launch 
the  Cavalry  Division  against  the  enemy  en- 
deavoxiring  to  turn  the  left  of  his  line,  while  to 
aid  the  retreat  of  the  right  of  the  2nd  Corps  from 
behind  Mons  he  advanced  the  1st  Corps,  whose 
2nd  Division  was  directed  to  make  a  powerful 
demonstration  from  the  direction  of  Harmignies 
as  if  it  was  desired  to  retake  Binche.  Thus  the 
offensive  was  taken  at  both  ends  of  the  British 
line.  The  artillery  of  the  1st  and  2n,d  Divisions 
supported  the  attack  of  the  2nd  Division,  and 
the  1st  Division  took  up  a  supporting  position 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  Peissant. 

Under  cover  of  this  demonstration  Sir  Horace 
Smith-Dorrien  retired  from  Conde-Mons  on  the 
line  Dour-Quarouble-Frameries.  The  3rd  Division 
(General  Hamilton's)  on  the  right  of  the  2nd 
Corps  suffered  considerable  loss  from  the  enemy 
debouching  from  Mons.  By  Sir  John  French's 
orders  General  Allenby  with  the  Cavalry  Division 
was  operating  vigorously  on  the  left  flank  of 
Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien,  but  about  7.30  a.m 
a  message  arrived  from  Sir  Charles  Fergusson, 
commanding   the    5th   Division    (part    of    Sir 


355 


356 


THE    TIMES  HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


FRENCH    HEAVY    GUN    IN    A    VILLAGE    NEAR    ARRAS.       {Sport  and  General. 


Horace  Smith-Dorrien's  Corps,  the  2nd),  that 
he  was  very  hard  pressed.  General  AUenby, 
therefore,  withdrew  his  cavalry  to  Sir  Charles 
Fergusson's  support.  In  the  course  of  this 
operation  General  De  Lisle,  with  the  2nd 
Cavalry  Brigade,  charged  the  flank  of  the  ad- 
vancing German  infantry,  but  500  yards  or  so 
from  the  enemy  was  held  up  by  wire.  The 
9th  Lancers  and  18th  Hussars  suffered  severely 
in  the  retirement  of  General  De  Lisle's  Brigade. 

The  situation  of  the  British  force  was  now 
most  precarious.  The  only  reinforcement  it 
had  received  was  the  19th  Infantry  Brigade, 
which  had  been  hurried  up  from  the  lines  of 
communication  to  Valenciennes,  and  on  the 
morning  of  Monday,  August  24,  was  stationed 
south  of  Quarouble  to  support  the  left  flank  of 
the  Army.  The  4th  Division  tmder  General  Snow 
had  commenced  detraining  at  Le  Cateau  on  the 
23rd,  but  it  was  not  till  the  next  day  (the  25th) 
that  it  became  available  for  service. 

By  nightfall  Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien's 
Corps,  which  was  retiring  tm.der  cover  of  the 
cavalry,  held  a  position  west  of  Bavai,  Sir 
Douglas  Haig  being  on  his  right.  The  left 
wing  of  the  British  Army  was  protected  by  the 
cavalry  and  by  the  newly  arrived  J  9th  Infantry 
Brigade  posted  between  Jenlain  and  Bry;  the 
right  wing  rested  on  the  fortress  of  Maubeuge. 

A  paragraph  from  Sir  John  French's  dispatch 
of  September  7  will  show  the  reader  how 
dangerous    was    the    position    of    the    British 


Army.  "  The  French  were  still  retiring," 
he  says,  "  and  I  had  no  support  except  such  as 
was  afforded  by  the  fortress  of  Maubeuge  ;  and 
the  determined  attempts  of  the  enemy  to  get 
round  my  left  flank  assured  me  that  it  was  his 
intention  to  hem  me  against  that  place  and 
svirrotmd  me.  I  felt  that  not  a  moment  must  be 
lost  in  retiring  to  another  position  .... 
The  operation,  however,  was  full  of  danger 
and  difficvilty,  not  only  owing  to  the  very 
superior  force  in  my  front,  but  also  to  the  exhaus- 
tion of  the  troops."  Moreover  Sir  John  doubted 
the  wisdom  of  standing  to  fight  on  the,  about 
to  be  partially  entrenched,  position,  Cambrai- 
Le  Cateau-Landrecies,  and  he  had  determined 
to  make  a  great  effort  to  continue  the  retreat 
till  he  could  put  some  substantial  obstacle, 
such  as  the  Somme  or  the  Oise,  between  his 
troops  and  the  enemy,  and  afford  the  former 
some  opportunity  of  rest  and  reorganization. 
The  line  Vermand-St.  Quentin-Ribemont  was 
indicated  to  the  Corps  commanders  as  that 
towards  which  they  were  to  continue  their 
retreat.  St.  Quentin  is  on  the  Somme,  Ribe- 
mont  on  the  Oise,  Vermand  to  the  west  of  St. 
Quentin.  Behind  St.  Quentin  and  Ribemont 
lay  the  uncompleted  fortress  of  La  Fere. 

The  immediate  problem  before  Sir  John  was 
to  withdraw  his  army  from  between  Valen- 
Oiennes  and  Maubeuge  to  the  ro£id  joining 
Cambrai  and  Le  Cateau.  From  Maubeuge  to 
Landrecies  (a  few  miles  north-east  of  Le  Cateau 


TEE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


357 


on  the  road  from  the  latter  place  to  Maubeuge) 
stretches  the  Forest  of  Mormal.  The  guns  of 
the  forts  to  the  south  of  Maubeuge  would  not 
prevent  the  Germans  frora  occupying  the 
forest.  General  Snow's  division  from  Le  Cateau 
was  moved  up  to  a  central  position,  with  his 
right  south  of  Solesmes  and  his  left  resting 
on  the  Cambrai-Le  Cateau  road  south  of 
La  Chaprie. 

The  retirement  recommenced  in  the  early 
morning  of  Tuesday,  August  25,  and  the  rear- 
guards were  ordered  to  be  clear  of  the  Eth- 
Bavai-Maubeuge  road  by  5  30  a.m.  General 
Allenby  and  the  cavalry  were  to  cover  the 
retreat.  With  the  Ist  Corps  Sir  Douglas 
Haig  was  to  march  to  Landrecies  by  the 
road  along  the  eastern  border  of  the  Forest 
of  Mormal. 

The  two  French  Reserve  Divisions  were 
right  of  the  British  Army,  and  the  24th,  a  French 
cavalry  corps,  under  General  Sordet,  had  been 
in  billets  north  of  Avesnes  to  the  east  of  Lan- 
dr  cies.  Sir  John  French  had  visited  General 
Sordet  and  earnestly  requested  his  cooperation 
and  support  diu-ing  the  fighting  of  the  23rd  and 
24th.  Sordet  had  promised  to  obtain  sanction 
from  his  army  commander  to  act  on  Sir  John 
French's  left,  but  his  horses  were  too  tired  to 
move.  Sir  John  could,  however,  rely  on  the 
aid  of  the  two  French  Reserve  Divisions,  but 


not  immediately  on  the  cavalry  of  General 
Sordet.  From  the  west  he  might  also  expect 
some  indirect  assistance.  General  D'Amade 
was  near  Arras  with  the  61st  and  62nd  French 
Reserve  Divisions.  It  will  be  remembered  that 
the  2nd  German  Corps  had  been  moving  from  the 
direction  of  Tournai  to  envelop  the  left  of  Sir  John 
French.  Fiu-ther  to  the  west  a  German  cavalry 
division,  a  battalion  of  infantry,  with  artillery 
and  machine  guns,  had  occupied  Lille,  on  which  a 
heavy  fine  was  imposed,  and  routed  the  French 
Territorials  (who  had  no  artillery)  at  Bethune 
and  captured  Cambrai.  West  of  Cambrai  they 
inflicted  another  severe  defeat  on  the  Terri- 
torials at  Bapaume,  and  threatened  Arras. 
General  D'Amade,  who  was  organizing  the 
French  defensive  north  of  the  Somme,  hurried 
up  Regular  troops  to  the  latter  place.  General 
D'Amade,  one  of  the  most  illustrious  French 
soldiers,  had  been  military  attache  with  the 
British  Army  during  the  South  African  War, 
and  he  had  subsequently  commanded  the  French 
troops  in  Morocco.  Sir  John  French  could  count 
on  his  attacking  the  right  of  the  German 
forces  endeavouring  to  envelop  the  British 
left    wing. 

Throughout  Tuesday,  August  25,  the  1st 
Corps  continued  its  march  on  Landrecies,  which 
was  reached  about  10  p.m.  They  had  been 
intended  to  fill  the  gap  between  Le  Cateau  and 


AFTER     A     BATTLE.  [Sport  and  General. 

A  country  cart  collecting  equipment  of  dead  soldiers  from  the  battle-fields  and  unloading 
>  on  the  station  platform. 


358 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


Landrecies,  but  the  troops  were  too  exhausted 
to  march  further.  They  were  heavily  engaged 
south  and  east  of  Maroilles,  a  few  miles  north- 
east of  Landrecies,  and  the  9th  Grerman  Army 
Corps,  moving  through  the  Forest  of  Mormal,  in 
the  evening  attacked  the  4th  Guards  Brigade 
stationed  in  and  around  Landrecies  itself. 
During  the  fighting  a  German  Infantry  Brigade 
suffered  heavily.  It  advanced  from  the  woods 
in  the  closest  order  into  the  narrow  street, 
which  was  completely  filled.  The  British 
machine  guns  from  the  head  of  the  street  swept 
away  the  crown  of  the  German  colvtmn,  a  fright- 
ful panic  ensued,  and  it  was  estimated  that  no 
fewer  than  800  to  900  dead  and  woiinded  were 
lying  in  the  street  alone.  The  German  officers, 
who  were  accustomed  from  behind  to  shoot 
with  revolvers  the  privates  who  hesitated  to 
advance,  had  not  been  able  to  check  the 
stampede.  The  British  in  these  encounters  had 
received  sissistance  from  the  two  French  Reserve 
Divisions  on  the  right,  but,  as  Sir  John  French 
said  in  his  dispatch,  it  was  owing  mainly  "  to  the 
skilful  manner  in  which  Sir  Douglas  Haig  had 
extricated  his  Corps  from  an  exceptionally 
difficult  position  in  the  darkness  of  the  night " 
that  the  1st  Corps  was  able  at  dawn  to  resume 
their  march  south  towards  Wassigny  on  Guise. 


PARIS. 

For  defensive  use  in  case  of  necessity  trenches 

were  dug  across  the  streets. 

iSport  and  General. 


Meanwhile  Sir  Horace  Smith-Dorrien,  covered 
by  the  cavalry  which  diiring  the  24th  and  25th 
had  become  a  good  deal  scattered,  and  by 
General  Snow's  Division  posted  north  of  the 
Cambrai-Le  Cateau  road  with  its  right  south  of 
Solesmes,  had  by  6  p.m.  reached  the  line 
Le  Cateau-Cambrai,  their  right  being  at  Le 
Cateau  and  their  left  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Caudry.  The  4th  Division,  which  had  been 
placed  temporarily  under  the  command  of  Sir 
Horace  Smith-Dorrien,  had  fallen  back  bej^ond 
Caudry  tow.ards  Seranvillers,  the  left  being 
thrown  back. 

Wednesday,  the  26th,  was  the  most  critical 
day  of  the  retreat.  At  dawn  it  became 
apparent  that  the  enemj'  was  throwing  the 
bulk  of  his  strength  against  Sir  Horace  Smith- 
Dorrien  and  General  Snow.  The  gims  of  no 
fewer  than  four  German  Corps  were  in  position 
before  the  British  left,  and  Sir  Horace  judged 
it  impossible  to  continue  his  retreat  at  daybreak 
in  face  of  this  attack.  The  1st  Corps  at  that 
moment  was  incapable  of  movement,  and 
General  Sordet,  owing  to  the  state  of  his 
horses,  was  unable  to  help  the  British.  There 
had  been  no  time  properly  to  entrench  the 
position. 

According  to  the  rules  of  Kriegspiel  the  British 
left  wing  was  doomed  to  destruction,  but,  as 
on  so  many  previous  occasions  in  history,  the 
British  soldier  did  not  know  when  he 
was  beaten.  Outnumbered  oa  it  was  by  at 
least  four  gims  to  one,  the  Artillery  deluged 
the  advancing  Germans  with  shrapnel.  In  vain 
the  German  commander  threw  his  picked 
cavalry — the  German  Guard  Cavalry  Divi- 
sion— into  the  battle.  It  was  thrown  back 
by  the  British  12th  Infantry  Brigade  in  com- 
plete disorder. 

Still  there  are  limits  to  human  endurance, 
and  it  was  obvious  that  if  General  Smith- 
Dorrien  was  to  escape  annihilation  he  must 
at  all  costs  retreat.  About  3.30  p.m.  the  order 
to  retire  was  given,  and,  thanks  to  the  Artillery 
and  the  Cavalry,  and  the  General's  superb 
handling  of  his  Corps,  this  most  difficult  and 
dangerous  operation  was  successfully  effected. 
"  I  say  without  hesitation,"  wrote  Sir  John 
French,  "  that  the  saving  of  the  left  wing 
.  .  .  could  never  have  been  accomplished 
tmless  a  commander "  (Sir  Horace  Smith- 
Dorrien)  "  of  rare  and  imusual  coolness,  intre- 
pidity, and  determination  had  been  present  to 
personally  conduct  the  operation."  The  British 
had  inflicted  terrible  losses  on  the  enemy,  and 
the  German  public,  who  had  been  led  to  expect 
a  new  Sedan,  were  instead  to  read  long  lists  of 
casualties  sufiered  by  the  finest  regiments  in 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAB. 


359 


SAVING  THE  GUNS  IN  THE  ACTION  AT  COMPIEGNE. 


the  German  Army.  From  the  23rd  to  the  26th 
inclusive  the  British  losses  were  estimated  by- 
Sir  John  French  at  between  5,000  to  6,000 
men.  Considering  the  enormous  forces  that  they 
had  baffled  for  four  days,  these  figures  are  the 
most  eloquent  of  tributes  to  the  skill  of  the 
British  commander,  his  officers  and  men. 

The  judgment  of  a  foreigner — especially  a 
hostile  foreigner — is  very  frequently  the  judg- 
ment of  posterity,  and  after  ages  will  doubtless 
repeat  that  of  a  member  of  the  German  General 
Staff,  who  was  conversing  one  day  with  a  Dane 
in  the  September  of  1914.  He  was  referring  to 
the  Battles  of  Mons  and  Landrecies-Le  Cateau  ; 
"  The  English,"  he  said,  "  have  prepared  a 
surprise  for  us  in  this  war,  especially  in  the 
battles  in  North  France. 

The  Englishman  is  cool,  indifferent  to  danger,  and 
to  the  dispensations  of  Providence.  He  stays  where 
he  is  commanded.  He  shoots  magnificently,  extra- 
ordinarily well.  He  is  good  at  bayonet  attack, 
.  .  .  and  it  is  during  these  bayonet  attacks 
when  luck  is  against  him  that  he  is  at  his  very  best. 


His  endurance  and  marksmanship  make  him  an  op- 
ponent of  high  rank.  It  is  the  English  we  try 
to  hit  hardest  in  this  war. 

After  we  had  broken  through  the  French  positions 
on  the  Belgian  frontier  and  had  got  Joffre's  army  on 
the  move  towards  the  south  the  German  Army's  ad- 
vance appeared  to  be  checked.  It  was  General 
French's  army  that  had  stayed  the  retreat.  We  ordered 
the  English  lines  to  be  stormed.  Our  troops  dashed 
into  them  with  fixed  bayonets,  but  our  efforts  to 
drive  the  English  back  were  in  vain.  They  are  very 
good  at  resisting  a  bayonet  attack.  The  English 
are  strong  people,  athletic,  and  well  developed.  So 
we  decided  to  shoot  them  down,  but  we  found  that 
they  aimed  remarkably  well.  "  Every  bullet  found 
its  billet,"  as  they  say. 

We  ordered  our  best  shots  to  tackle  them,  but  the 
result  was  not  in  our  favour.  Then  we  got  all  our  artil" 
lery  at  work  that  could  be  spared  against  them.  We 
swept  the  English  positions  with  a  rain  of  shells  — 
a  regular  bombardment.  When  the  firing  ceased  wo 
expected  to  find  the  English  had  fled.  The  F-nglish 
artillery  cannot  be  compared  with  ours  or  thePren  h. 
and  we  soon  silenced  it.  We  had  not  heard  from  the 
English  for  an  hour. 

But  how  can  I  describe  our  astonishment  ?  Beyond 
the  shell-swept  zone  we  saw  English  soldiers'  heads 
moving  and  they  began  to  vise  their  rifles  again  .is 
soon  as  the  coast  was  clear.     The  English  are  a  cool 


360 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


lot !  We  had  to  assault  again  and  again,  but  in  vain. 
We  were  in  fact  repulsed  after  having  literally  sur- 
rounded them.  Their  perseverance  and  pluck  had 
gained  their  just  reward.  The  retirement  could  now 
be  carried  out  in  an  orderly  way.  All  risk  of  cata- 
strophe to  the  retreating  army  was  averted. 

Even  the  sight  of  the  wounded  surprised  us  and 
commanded  our  respect.  They  lay  so  still  and 
scarcely  ever  complained. 

The  retreat  continued  far  into  the  night  of 
the  26th  and  through  the  27th  and  28th, 
when  the  troops  halted  on  the  hne  Noyon- 
Chaunaye-La  Fere.  The  feebleness  of  the 
German  pursuit  is  further  evidence  of  the 
efficiency  with  which  the  British  troops  had 
been  handled  in  action,  though  it  must  be 
remembered  that  by  now  General  Sordet  with 
his  cavalry  was  reheving  the  pressure  on  the 
British  rear,  and  General  d'Amade  with  the 
61st  and  62nd  French  Reserve  Divisions  from 
the  neighbourhood  of  Arras  was  attacking 
BUuck's  right  flank.  No  fewer  than  five  German 
corps  had  been  flung  at  two  British  corps  and 
General  Snow's  Division.  The  German  mihtary 
reputation,  damaged  by  General  Pau  in  Alsace, 
had  been  shattered  by  Sir  John  French.  Among 
the  officers  besides  those  already  mentioned 
whom  Sir  John  selected  for  special  praise  in 
respect  of  their  conduct  during  this  tremendous 
test  of  ability,  courage,  and  endurance  were 
his  Military  Secretary,  the  Hon.  W.  Lambton  ; 
the  Chief  and  Sub-Chief  of  the  General  Staff, 
Sir     Archibald     Murray     and     Major-Greneral 


Wilson  ;  the  Quartermaster-General,  Sir  William 
Robertson ;  and  the  Adjutant-General,  Sir 
Nevil  Macready. 

The  Royal  Flying  Corps,  under  Sir  David 
Henderson,  had  had  their  baptism  of  fire,  and 
covered  themsalves  with  glory.  "They  have," 
said  Sir  John  French,  "  furnished  me  with  the 
most  complete  and  accurate  information,  which 
has  been  of  incalculable  value  in  the  conduct 
of  the  operations.  Fired  at  constantly  both 
by  friend  and  foe,  and  not  hesitating  to  fly 
in  every  kind  of  weather,  they  have  remained 
undaunted  throughout."  They  had  also 
destroyed  five  of  the  enemy's  machines  by 
fighting  in  the  air. 

One  of  the  duels  in  the  air  has  been  graphic- 
ally described  by  a  private  of  the  1st  RoyeJ 
West  Kent  Regiment.  The  airman  was  a 
Frenchman,  but  it  brings  vividly  before  us 
the  nature  of  part  of  the  work  done  by  Sir 
David  Henderson's  heroic  subordinates  : — 

There  was  one  interesting  sight  I  saw  as  the  column 
was  on  the  march,  and  that  was  a  duel  in  the  air 
between  French  and  German  aeroplanes.  It  was 
wonderful  to  see  the  Frenchman  manoeuvre  to  get 
the  upper  position  of  the  German,  and  after  about 
10  minutes  or  a  quarter  of  an  hour  the  Frenchman 
got  on  top  and  blazed  away  with  a  revolver  on  the 
German.  He  injiu-ed  him  so  much  as  to  cause  him 
to  descend,  and  when  found  he  was  dead.  The  British 
troops  buried  the  airman  and  burnt  the  aeroplane.  ^ 
During  that  day  we  were  not  troubled  by  any  moye 
German  aeroplanes. 


FRENCH    ARMY    ON    THE    MARCH    IN    THE    CHAMPAGNE    DISTRICT. 

Earthworks  in  the  foreground.  [Central  Press. 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


361 


REMAINS     OF    A     GERMAN     MOTOR     CONVOY. 
Which    was    surprised    by    a    French    battery. 


[Topical. 


Leaving  for  a  time  the  British,  we  must  now 
turn  to  the  Mouse  side  of  the  theatre  of  war. 

The  fall  of  Namur  and  the  German  crossing 
of  the  Sambre  might  not  by  themselves  have 
obliged  the  British  and  French  to  retreat  from 
the  Sambre.  It  was  the  failure  of  the  French 
offensive  through  the  Belgian  Ardennes,  the 
withdrawal  of  the  French  troops  to  the  valley 
of  the  Meuse,  and  the  forcing,  after  desperate 
fighting,  of  the  Mevise  between  Givet  and  Namur 
that  perhaps  decided  General  Joffre  to  retreat 
on  the  Aisne  8,nd  Marne.  Near  Givet,  the 
point  where  the  Meuse  leaves  France  and  enters 
Belgium,  the  Germans  had  traversed  the 
river.  The  possession  of  the  triangle  of  country 
from  the  environs  of  Maubeuge  to  Namur  and 
from  Namur  to  Givet  enabled  them  to  turn  the 
French  defensive  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Meuse. 
A  body  of  Germans  advanced  from  Rocroi  on 
Bethel. 

The  wooded  country  between  Givet  and 
Mezieres  permitted  the  French  to  oppose  a  des- 
perate resistance  to  the  invaders  ascending  the 
Meuse.  At  Charleville,  on  the  western  bank  of 
the  Meuse  opposite  Mezieres  (a  few  miles  to  the 
west  of  Sedan),  a  determined  stand  was  made. 
The  inhabitants  were  withdrawn  from  Charle- 
ville and  mitrailleuses  hidden  in  the  houses. 
The  Germans  reached  Charleville  on  August  25. 
They  were  permitted  to  cross  the  three  bridges 
into  the  town.  Suddenly  the  bridges  were 
blown  up  by  contact  mines,  and  the  Germans 
in  Charleville  were  raked  by  the  fire  of  the 
mitrailleuses  and  overwhelmed  with  shells. 
Nevertheless  the  Germans,  with  reckless  coiu*age. 


persisted  in  their  enterprise.  The  French  guns 
from  the  hills  round  Charleville  swept  away  the 
heads  of  their  columns,  but  the  Germans  threw 
pontoon  bridges  over  the  river,  and  ultinxately 
the   French  gunners   had  to  retire. 

South-west,  between  Mezieres  and  Rethel, 
near  Signy  I'Abbaye,  there  was  another  fierce 
encounter.  M6zieres  itself  was  abandoned  by 
the  French. 

Meanwhile,  the  French  invasion  of  the 
Belgian  Ardennes  and  the  Duchy  of  Luxem- 
biu-g,  from  the  region  between  Mezieres  and 
Verdun,  had,  like  the  invasion  of  the  Belgian 
Ardennes  from  the  valley  of  the  Meuse,  been 
unsuccessful.  The  French  crossed  the  Semois, 
a  tributary  of  the  Meuse  which  enters  it  below 
Mezieres,  and  advanced  towards  Neufchateau. 
They  were  repulsed  by  the  Germans,  com- 
manded by  Duke  Albrecht  of  Wiirtemberg. 

At  the  opening  of  the  war  a  large  body  of 
German  cavalry  had  descended  from  Luxem- 
burg, and  endeavoured  to  slip  past  Longwy 
and  cut  the  French  line  between  Verdun  and 
Mezieres.  But  the  garrison  of  Longwy,  led  by 
the  heroic  Colonel  d'Arche,  had  held  them  in 
check  and  driven  them  back  with  heavy 
losses.  Longwy,  though  its  defences  were 
out  of  date,  did  not  surrender  till  August  27, 
and  the  magnificent  resistance  of  its  garrison 
seriously  retarded  the  advance  of  the  German 
Army  (based  on  Treves)  tmder  the  command 
of  the  Crown  Prince.  Near  Spincourt,  north- 
east of  Verdun,  the  French  repulsed  a  German 
attack  (August  10-11)  and  captxired  three  guns 
and  three  mitrailleuses. 


362 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


THE    TIMMS.'HmTOItY    OF.   THE    WAB. 


363 


STEINHAUER. 
The  Kaiser's  Master  Spy. 

[Record  Press. 

The  French  troops  victorious  near  Spincourt 
pursued  the  enemy,  and  their  artillery  on 
the  12th  surprised  and  destroyed  a  regiment 
of  dragoons.  Two  aviators  from-  Verdun, 
Lieutenant  Cesari  and  Corporal  Prudhommeau, 
flew  over  Metz  and  dropped  bombs  on  a 
Zeppelin  hangar.  At  Virton,  north-east  of 
Montmedy,  the  French  6th  Corps  inflicted 
a  considerable  defeat  on  the  Germans.  In  the 
environs  of  Nancy  on  the  25th  there  was  a 
desperate  battle  between  the  French  and  the 
Crown  Prince  of  Bavaria's  Army.  The  15th 
Corps,  surprised  in  the  battle  of  August  20 
(referred  to  in  Chapter  XXIII.),  executed  a 
brilliant  counter-attack  (August  25-26).  The 
Germans  suffered  heavily. 

In  spite  of  the  French  successes^  between 
Mezieres  and  Verdim,  the  French,  owing  to 
the  failure  of  the  operations  on  the  Sambre 
and  the  northern  Meuse,  and  in  the  Belgian 
Ardennes,  had  to  withdraw  to  the  valley  of 
the  Meuse.  On  the  27th  Longwy  capitulated. 
A  regiment  of  Germans  who  were  crossing  the 
river  near  Dun  were  driven  into  it.  In  the 
region  between  the  Meuse  and  Rethel  there 
was  a  great  battle  on  August  31.  But,  as 
General  Joffre  had  d^ided  to  retire  on  the 


Marne,  the  line  of  the  Meuse  between  Verdun 
and  Mezieres  was  abandoned,  and  the  Germans 
advanced  to  the  Forest  of  the  Argonne. 

Thus  pursued  by  tJie  German  Armies 
commanded  by  Kluck  on  the  west,  Biilow 
from  Charleroi  and  Namur,  Hansen  from 
Dinant  and  Givet,  the  Allied  forces  by 
August  28  had  been  pushed  back  to  a 
line  stretching  roughly  from  Amiens  to 
Mezieres,  while  their  forces  east  of  the 
Meuse,  between  Mezieres  and  Verdun,  were 
Iretiring  before  Duke  Albrecht  of  Wiirtem- 
berg  and  the  Crown  Prince,  and  to  the 
south-east  of  Verdun  the  Crown  Prince  of 
Bavaria  was  being  headed  off  the  gap  of 
Nancy. 

On  August  28  the  British  Army  was  retiring 
from  Noyon  and  La  Fere  on  Compiegne  and 
Soissons.  Two  columns  of  German  cavalry  from 
the  neighbourhood  of  St.  Quentin  were  in  hot 
pursuit.  The  western  column,  led  by  the 
Uhlans  of  the  Guard,  was  charged  by 
General  Gough  at  the  head  of  the 
3rd  Cavalry  Brigade  and  routed.  The 
column  to  the  east  was  attacked  by 
General  Chetwode  with  the  5th  Cavalry 
Brigade.  The  12th  Lancers  and  Royal 
Scots  Greys  rode  down  the  enemy,  spear- 
ing large  numbers  of  them.  The  Scots 
Greys  were  apparently  acting  in  con- 
junction with  the  Black  Watch.  Imitating 
the  Greys'  tactics  at  Waterloo,  they  plunged 
straight  into  the  ranks  of  the.  enemy,  a 
soldier  of  the  Black  Watch  hanging  on 
to  each  horseman.  The  Germans,  com- 
pletely surprised,  were  broken  up  and 
repulsed  with  tremendous  losses.  "  Our 
men,"  said  a  wounded  soldier  who  was 
a  witness  of  one  of  the  charges,  "  came  on 
with  a  mighty  shout,  and  fell  upon  the 
enemy  with  the  utmost  violence.  The  weight 
of  the  horses  carried  them  into  the  close - 
formed  ranks  of  the  Germans,  and  the  gallant 
Greys  and  the  '  Kalties  '  gave  a  fearful  account 
of  themselves." 

Still  the  position  of  the  British  was  critical 
in  the  extreme.  For  six  days  they  had  been 
marching  and  fighting  continuously — by  day 
under  a  blazing  August  sun,  and  by  night  in 
a  heavy,  stifling  atmosphere- — in  a  country 
the  features  of  which  were  unfamiliar  to  them 
and  the  inhabitants  of  which  spoke  a  language 
which  most  of  the  soldiers  could  not  under- 
stand. 

At  Paris  the  Cabinet  which  had  prepared  for 
the  war  was  being  replaced  by  another  and 
a  stronger  one.  It  was  presided  over  by  M. 
Viviani ;  the  ex-Socialist,  Briand,  was  Minister 


364 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


MAUBEUGE. 
A  Cupola  fort  after  the  bombardment. 


^Central  News. 


of  Justice  ;  Delcasse — to  whom  France  and  Great 
Britain  owed  such  a  debt  of  gratitude — held 
the  portfolio  of  Foreign  Affairs,  and  Millerand 
was  Minister  of  War.  Two  days  earlier 
(August  27)  General  Gallieni  had  been 
appointed  Governor  of  Paris.  A  few  djiys  later 
the  President  of  the  Republic  and  the  Ministry 
were  to  leave  Paris  for  Bordeaux. 

The  moment  had  come  for  a  consultation 
between  the  French  and  British  Commanders. 
Should  the  retreat  be  continued,  or,  as  the 
French  and  British  peoples  would  have  pre- 
ferred, should  the  offensive  be  resumed  ?  On 
the  25th  Lord  Kitchener  had  delivered  his  first 
speech  in  the  House  of  Lords.  The  Empires, 
he  had  said,  with  whom  the  British  were  at  war 
had  called  to  the  colovirs  almost  their  entire 
male  population.  The  principle  the  British 
on  their  part  would  observe  was  this,  that  while 
the  enemy's  maximum  force  vinderwent  a  con- 
stant diminution,  the  reinforcements  prepared 
by  the  British  would  steadily  and  increasingly 
flow  out  until  they  had  an  army  which  in  numbers 
not  less  than  in  quality  would  not  be  unworthy 
of  the  power  and  responsibilities  of  the  British 
Empire.  A  speedy  victory  was  needed  by 
Germany.  The  Russians  had  mobilized 
more  quickly  than  had  been  expected ;  they 
had  invaded  Galicia  and  Eastern  Pnissia, 
while  the  Serbians  on  the  22nd  had  severely 
beaten  the  Austrians.      There  was  no  need  to 


play  into  the  German  hands  by  a  premature 
offensive. 

At  1  o'clock  on  August  29  Sir  John 
French  was  visited  by  General  Joffre.  The 
French  Commander-in-Chief,  whose  plans  for 
invading  Germany  through  the  Belgian  Arden- 
nes and  the  Duchy  of  Lixxemburg,  whUe  General 
Pau  was  seizing  Alsace  and  Southern  Lorraine 
had,  owing  to  the  capture  of  Namur  and  defeats 
in  the  Ardennes,  been  rendered  impossible 
of  execution,  had  changed  his  strategy  with  a 
rapidity  and  coolness  which  would  have  delighted 
Napoleon  himself.  To  the  German  offensive 
he  had  opposed  a  defensive  which  recalls 
Wellington's  retreat  in  Portugal  before  Mas- 
sena,  Barclay  de  Tolly's  before  Napoleon  in 
1812.  "  His  strategic  conception,"  says  Sir 
John  French,  •'  was  to  draw  the  enemy  on  at 
all  points,  until  a  favourable  situation  was 
created  from  which  to  assume  the  offensive." 
From  day  to  day,  owing  to  the  development  of 
the  German  plans  and  the  vicissitudes  of  the 
immense  combat,  he  had  had  to  modify  the 
methods  by  which  he  thought  to  attain  his 
object.  In  General  Joffre  and  the  cool, 
eloquent  President  of  the  Republic,  Raymond 
Poincar6,  was  personified  the  spirit  of  the  new 
France,  that  France  which,  while  retaining  its 
pre-eminence  in  arts  and  literature,  had  given 
to  humanity  a  Pasteur,  a  Curie,  and  the  greatest 
mathematician    of    his   day,   Henri   Poincard, 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE     WAR. 


365 


that  France  whose  aviator  Bleriot  had  been 
the  first  to  fly  the  Straits  of  Dover,  whose 
champions  in  the  world  of  sport,  Carpentier 
and  Bouin*  had  just  won  the  admiration  of 
every  sportsman  and  athlete. 

The  meeting  of  the  silent,  thoughtful  British 
Commander  and  the  calm,  resolute  engineer, 
who  for  the  second  time  had  seen  his  native 
land  ravaged  by  the  hordes  from  beyond 
the  Rhine,  will  remain  for  ever  memorable. 
"  General  Joffre  was  most  kind,  cordial,  and 
sympathetic,  as  he  has  always  been,"  wrote 
Sir  John  French  to  Lord  Kitchener.  The  lines 
of  the  Somme  and  Aisne,  together  with  the 
half-fortified  La  Fere,  Laon,  and  Reims,  it 
was  decided,  were  to  be  abandoned,  and  the 
retreat  was  to  be  continued  to  the  Marne.  To 
this  movement  the  French  forces  in  the  east 
were  to   conform. 

The  British  were  provisionally  to  occupy  the 
line  Compiegne-Soissons,  while  the  German 
pursuit  was  to  be  checked  by  a  French  counter- 
offensive  on  the  west  and  north-east  of  the 
British  positions.  General  Joffre  had  al- 
ready directed  the  5th  French  Army  (consisting 
of  fotir  corps)  behind  the  Oise  between  La 
Fere  and  Guise  to  attack  the  Germans  on  the 
Somme.  Commanded  by  General  Pau,  who  had 
been    recalled    from    Alsace,    it    engaged    the 

*This  magnificent  athlete,  one  of  the  finest  long-distance  runners 
that  has  ever  appeare<l,  was  to  be  a  victim  of  the  Kaiser's  ambition. 


German  forces  from  Peronne  on  the  Sonmie  to 
Guise  on  the  Oise.  The  German  Guard,  its 
reserve  corps,  and  the  10th  Corps  were  de- 
cisively beaten  south  of  Guise,  and  the  Guard 
and  the  10th  Corps  were  rapidly  driven  by 
the  French  Army  across  the  Oise.  But  the 
left  wing  of  the  French  was  unsuccessful,  and 
Amiens  and  the  line  of  the  Somme  were 
evacuated. 

General  Joffre  informed  Sir  John  French  that 
the  6th  French  Army,  composed  of  the  7th 
Corps,  which  had  been  railed  up  from  the  south 
to  the  east  of  Amiens,  of  four  reserve  divisions, 
and  of  Sordet's  cavalry,  was  forming  up  on  the 
British  left.  The  right  wing  of  this  army  rested 
on  Roye,  north-west  of  Noyon.  In  the  space 
to  the  right  of  the  5th  Army  (which  had  beaten 
the  Germans  at  the  Battle  of  Guise)  and  to  the 
left  of  the  4th  Army,  which  was  retiring  through 
the  country  between  the  Oise  and  the  Meuse, 
a  new  army  (the  9th)  under  General  Foch, 
made  up  of  three  corps  from  the  south,  was 
operating. 

Such  was  the  situation  on  August  29.  The 
retirement  once  more  began,  and  the  2nd  Corps 
of  the  British  Army  withdrew  through  Com- 
piegne,  the  city  where  Joan  of  Arc  was  taken 
prisoner,  and  where  at  the  Palace  Napoleon  I. 
and  Napoleon  III.  had  held  their  Courts.  In 
the  forest  to  the  south  of  Compiegne  the  1st 


FRENCH    WOUNDED    SOLDIERS    DETRAINING    AND    BOARDING    A    HOSPITAL    SHIP. 

iTopical. 


366 


THE    TIMES    HISTORY    OF    THE    WAR. 


Cavalry  Brigade  after  momentarily  losing  a 
Horse  Artillery  battery,  with  the  help  of  some 
detachments  from  the  3rd  Corps  (which  were 
now  at  the  seat  of  war)  operating  on  their  left, 
defeated  the  pursuing  cavalry,  recovered  the 
guns  and  captured  twelve  of  the  enemy.  The 
1st  (Sir  Douglas  Haig's)  Corps,  which  was 
retiring  from  Soissons  to  the  east,  also  fought 
a  rearguard  action  at  Villers-Cotterets  on  the 
road  from  Soissons  to  Paris.  The  4th  Guards 
Brigade  in  this  engagement  suffered  severely. 

As  the  British  retreated  they  blew  up  the 
bridges  across  the  rivers  and  streams  crossed 
by  them.  By  September  3  they  were  behind 
the  Marne,  between  Lagny  and  Signy- Signets, 
but  General  Joffre  decided  that  they  should  not 
halt  there,  but  place  the  Seine  between  them 
and  the  enemy.  The  Germans  threw  bridges 
over  the  Marne  and  threatened  the  line  of  the 
British  Army  and  of  the  5th  and  9th  French 
Armies  to  their  right.  On  September  5  the 
British  were  beyond  the  Seine,  and  on  that  day 
Sir  John  French  saw  General  Joffre,  who 
explained  to  him  that  he  intended  at  last  to 
take  the  offensive.  The  President  of  the  French 
Republic,  the  Ministers  and  the  Diplomatic  Corps 
held  left  for  Bordeaux  on  the  2nd.  The  news 
had  arrived  of  a  decisive  victory  by  .the  Russians 
over  the  Austrians  in  Galicia.  On  the  4th  the 
Germans  appeared  to  have  suspended  their 
movement  on  Paris,  and  their  armies  to  the 
east  were  west  of  the  Argonne.  Maubeuge  had 
not  yet  fallen. 

It  was  obvious  that  Von  Kluck  was  moving 
to  join  Biilow  and  Haussn  and  avoid  the 
danger  of  a  gap  in  the  German  line.  The  Allied 
army  now  rested  to  the  west  on  Paris,  and 
to  the  east  on  Verdvm.  The  moment  had 
arrived  when  a  blow  could  be  struck  against  the 
German  communications.  Von  Kluck's  Army 
(the  1st)  was  moving  east,  the  2nd  German 
Army,  after  taking  Reims,  was  advancing 
south-west  to  the  Mame,  the  4th  German  Army 
was  west  of  the  Argonne,  and  the  7th  German 
Army  had  been  repulsed  by  a  French  corps  near 
D'Einville. 

The  British  losses  in  the  operations  from 
Mens  to  the  Mame  were  estimated  at  15,000 


killed,  wounded,  or  missing.  "Drafts  amounting 
to  19,000  men  had  reeiched,  or  were- reaching, 
the  Army,  and  lost  material  had  been  replaced. 
The  moral  results  were  svimmed  up  by  the 
Press  Biireau  in  the  following  words  : — 

There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  our  men 
have  established  a  personal  ascendancy  over 
the  Germans  and  that  they  are  conscious  of 
the  fact  that  with  anything  like  even  nvimbers 
the  result  would  not  be  doubtful.  The  shoot- 
ing of  the  German  infantry  is  poor,  while  the 
British  rifle  fire  has  devastated  every  coliman 
of  attack  that  has  presented  itself.  Their 
superior  training  and  intelligence  has  enabled 
the  British  to  use  open  formations  with  effect, 
and  thus  to  cope  with  the  vast  numbers  em- 
ployed by  the  enemy.  The  cavalry,  who  have 
had  even  more  opportunities  for  displaying 
personal  prowess  and  address,  have  defi- 
nitely established  their  superiority.  Sir  John 
French's  reports  dwell  on  this  marked 
superiority  of  the  British  troops  of  every 
arm  of  the  service  over  the  Germans.  "  The 
cavalry,"  he  says,  "do  as  they  like  with  the 
enemy  until  they  are  confronted  by  thrice  their 
numbers.  The  German  patrols  simply  fly 
before  our  horsemen.  The  German  troops 
will  not  face  our  infantry  fire,  and  as  regards 
our  artillery  they  have  never  been  opposed 
by  less  than  three  or  four  times  their 
niimbers." 

Our  troops  held  their  own  in  the  prolonged 
trial  of  the  retreat  because  they  were  ably 
handled,  because  our  methods  of  using  infantry 
were  superior  to  those  of  the  Germans,  because 
our  field  artillery  was  more  than  the  equal  of 
its  opponents,  and  because  when  the  time  came 
for  the  cavalry  to  thrust  itself  into  battle  it 
rode  home  and  proved  itself  far  superior  to  the 
German.  Never  before  had  the  British  horse- 
man shown  himself  to  be  such  a  master  of  his 
trade.  For  this  he  has  to  thank  his  instructors. 
Sir  Evelyn  Wood,  who  always  preached  its 
value,  French,  Haig,  Allenby,  Remington, 
Chetwode,  and  others,  who  taught  it  and 
enabled  it  to  gain  the  honours  it  reaped  in 
the  operations  in  France. 


The  various  important  phases  of  the  Great  War  will  be  dealt  with  in  subsequent  uniform  volumes 
prepared  by  the  London  TIMES  and  published  in  America  by  Woodward  &"  Van  Slyke,  Incorpo- 
rated, 45  West  34th  Street,  New  York. 


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BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


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2o0ct'5481l 

OCT?    Mii^ 
OCT  10  1957. 


LD2 


mt^. 


I  lao? 


23>\pr'66Au 

RECEIVED 


270ct'65Cn 


REC*D 

NOV  18 '65-8  P» 

LOAN  DEPT 
APR  2  5  1965  3  7 


c) 


LOAN  OEPT. 


.^^^ 


5^ 


^^ 


''47(A5702sl6)476 


eWEC'D  LD 


SEP   5 1969  6  5 


L- 


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